Differences

So I just got back from visiting my mom in the U.S. Of course, since I was there I had to check out the games available. I may not have any US consoles, but the DS is region-less.

So I hit up a Best Buy and a GameStop and both the shops were pretty much the same on prices. The Gamestop had more used games, but otherwise there’s not a lot of differences between the 2 stores. There was something about the prices though that got my attention. It was the difference between the U.S. prices and the U.K. prices, mainly that there isn’t any.

Now, it isn’t news to me that the prices are similar, I know that. For some reason though, being in a shop in the US, seeing the prices, it just annoyed me. Well, it obviously didn’t annoy me enough to not buy Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise. Now the reason it annoyed me is because we in Britain are essentially paying almost twice the price of US consumers given the current exchange rate.

Sure there are some European game developers, but not enough to offset the amount of games coming from US companies. Besides, the Great British Pound is the strongest currency in the world. Usually when you have a strong currency it means that importing things from other countries is cheap and you can pass these savings onto your customer and still make a small profit. Well, they’re making more than a little profit when they sell the game to us at the same price that the US distributors are selling to their public.

Maybe the failing banks should invest in games distribution. Then our fleecing would at least be helping stabilise the economy.