Johnny Ringo said:
You misunderstand, when I say expensive I don't mean full price, i mean full blown ripoff.
$109 AUD - which if i did the math right would be $119.50 USD given the current converstion rates. Does that sound fair to you?
Brand new suggested retail price on games in the US is typically $60 USD, you say Portal 2 cost $109 AUD which is roughly $120 US
60+60=120
If you consider that then you guys are getting ripped off big time! "Full blown rip off" is an under statement! You pay twice as much as we do! Ridiculous! Right?
No. Not so ridiculous. Pretty reasonable, actually.
It is all relative. Sometimes comparing the cost of one thing in one country to the costs of that same thing in another country is like comparing elephants to monkeys. When you consider that the Federal minimum wage per hour is $15 AUD in Australia verses $7.25 USD in the States (7.25+7.25=14.50)... Yeah, you're menial laborers are making a little over twice as much as ours... err, silly me, forgot the exchange rate... no, your minimum wage is 16.46 USD. A minimum wage employee would have to work around 8.5 hours (not taking into account taxes deducted from his pay check) in the United States in order to pay for a brand new release video game. If you got games at the same prices as us, it would only take your minimum wage worker four hour of work to more than pay for a brand new release video game. As it is, an Australian minimum wage worker could afford to dish out that $109 AUD in less than 7.5 hours.
Cost of living and standards of pay vary greatly from place to place, all things being relative, you guys are paying about the same as us, if not a little less than us, for brand new video games. That is actually quite remarkable when you consider the expenses involved in shipping things down to Australia AND any government imposed importation taxes those games may be subjected to. Breath easy, Munckinlanders, you're not being ripped off as badly as you think you are.