Be Excellent To Each Other

http://www.xbox360achievements.org/news/news-3148-Modern-Warfare-2-to-Lead-Xmas-Price-Hike-in-the-UK.html

Claiming shit about the weak pound and production costs, the biggest selling game of recent years is getting an increased RRP, to 55quid, fuck knows how much the thermal goggles one will cost over here.

That'll be why you can't find anywhere selling it for less than £45 then. I'm buying this pre-owned out of principle now.

Uhh, the pound really is weak, though. And that's visible in a lot more places than just games. Apple have raised UK pricing, compared to US pricing, for example.

I'll probably just hire it out and play through it in a weekend. Unless the multiplayer turns out to be the new bestest thing ever, in which case I'll buy it, play a couple of games with you lot, hate it and then trade it in.

We'll always have BF1943.

I'll still probably buy it at that anyway.

I've gotten more than £55 worth out of CoD4 and I probably will out of the next one.

It may even be fixed by then!

No game is worth £55, full stop. I rarely buy a game over £30.

Meanwhile, I'm not buying at as CoD4 had a horribly unbalanced multiplayer which required such things as hiding and kangarooing to make it fun.

But people will spend 4000 points ontop of a £40 game ? making it around £60
ie FO3

I'd regard FO3 as a full game without any DLC, so that's a bit of a wonky argument really.

I won't. I got FO3 for free (Green Travel Scheme at work), then traded it on Goozex and now I'm waiting for the GOTY edition with all the DLC.

The second part I agree with, the first part, not so much. There are people here who have had weeks of gametime from CoD4; for those people, £45 isn't a lot to ask, I suspect.

(Note that £55 is the RRP, compared to normal Xbox games having an RRP of £50. I therefore suggest this game is £5 more expensive than "normal", not £15 more.)

yes, but people who paid for it, and pay for the 5 DLCs surely will pay alot more!

I'll still get MW2 I can probably imagine Bobby and curiosity will aswell, due to the amount of enjoyment we got out of MW1

I'd got it into my head that £45 was the RRP for some reason. It's not so unreasonable now (but still shitty).

Currently if every stays the same as now the MW2 head set at $149 would cost us in the US:

£90.72

with 1 GBP = 1.64257 USD.

Pre order of Standard MW2 is $59.99 which is £36.52 from Best Buy.

Pretty much the case of $1 = £1 type crap*


*Welllll sort of

The first reply to that news story. We're fucked, gentlemen. People are stupid shocker.

It represents a 13% price increase.



Dunno, doesn't seem that stupid to me.


£42 after VAT. And in fact it's going to cost.... £45. Crivens! Rip Off Britain GONE MAD!

Modern games are quite fairly priced considering that Amiga games were clocking in at 25 or even 30 quid a pop.

Not forgetting the people who paid £50+ for Street Fighter 2 on the SNES.

Still if I were to pay £55 I'd expect a plastic guitar too.

Right, in all these US versus UK prices, two common mistakes bother me deeply. And you've done both of them, so now you get a lecture

Firstly, we pay 15% VAT on all purchses, US sales tax is added at point of sale (and generally not applied at all to internet purchases). So if you compare Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk, you have to add 15% to the US prices to be on a fair comparison basis.

Secondly, in the US, RRPs are generally adhered to by retailers, whereas in the UK, RRPs are generally discounted. Therefore in the UK RRPs are higher to reflect that the retailers will be selling below that figure! It's weird, but that's the way it is. So you should never compare RRPs, but instead compare selling prices in both countries.

So, as you said above, MW2 is $60 from Amazon. That converts to £42 in the UK, and we have numerous retailers accepting pre-orders for it for £45. I hardly think £3 is worth a ZOMG THE SKY IS FALLING reaction over; in fact, by the standards of these things, it's a very modest premium.

There is no doubt that prices of everything are higher here, which is partly due to genuinely higher costs of doing business in Europe and partly due to profiteering on the part of manufacturers. I don't see any profiteering by Activision in this decision, just good business sense.

I'd agree, but then I spent £120 on Radiant Silvergun...second-hand.

And I spent £150 on Guitar Hero World Tour. Shh!

Course its profiteering, you don't see any other publisher doing the same thing, even if the game was kept at the same price as last year it would make a bigger profit than most other games.

Yet. And manufacturers of other things are. Two examples I am familiar with: Apple's computers are more expensive, and big TV prices are going up.

I've had about £500 of gave-time-value® out of Oblivion, and it only cost me £12
*Jumps and clicks heels*

It's never, ever about the weak pound. Or a weak dollar, or strong yen, or middling euro. Ever.

It's only, every, purely, entirely, completely and fully what the market will bear.

It's never even the development costs. The budget is at most mearly a side effect of what they think they can get away with charging.

Activision have the best selling most critically acclaimed FPS game of this gen. And so they are popping a fiver on the price.

Thats why Wii games have an RRP of £35 compared to PS3/360 £50.. It's what the market will bear. And people who buy xboxes are idiot money wasting spods, and ultimately why I'll probably give this hobbie up.

They are going to get a rude awakening when they switch to digital delivery and realise how many people put up with full price games only partake in the hobbie because of all the cheap 2nd hand games they buy. The PSPGo with it's full RRP digital downloads will experience this first.

Don't be daft. Activision UK would be looking at a 30% drop in profits from the currency market across all their titles. They're taking a gamble by raising the price, and they know it, and they wouldn't have done that if they weren't backed into a corner by the conversion rates.

If that was true, games companies would never go bust.

No they haven't, or every game would be £5 more. Activision have predicted how much money they will make at a £50 RRP and then predicted how much money they will make at £55. The audience shrinking as they price it higher, but each sale is worth more. They settled at £55 because they believe we'll still buy it. And they are right to do so.

It's why 360 games cost more than Wii games. They know there audience. I'm not saying there is anything evil about it. They are just being a company.

Yes the changing of the exchange rate (which could massively alter in the next 4 months) effects there bottom line, but if the market wouldn't bare it they wouldn't do it.

And besides they are guessing as a title that is going to generate a lot of 'foot fall' to shops they figure that the retailer can absord a lot of that for them. Which is why Harry Potter books cost £18 when they were selling for £8. Cos the publishers could get away with it. And fair play to them.
EDIT: Well fair play to the extent that I think there dicks anyhow, and will be waiting till I can get it for ~£25.

Buuttt butttt ZOMG THE SKY IS FALLING!

An Amiga game costing £24.99 in 1992 would, with inflation, cost £39.50 today.

Now remind me, how much was Rise of the Robots?

You lot wait until the VAT goes back up again. It was the increase of VAT to 17.5% that pushed budget games up to £3.99 in the last recession.

The expectation is that it'll rise to 20%, too. Which means that everyone who pretended to pass on the cut but didn't will then raise their prices by 5%, meaning an effective 22.5% rate. Nice.

Internet purchases don't have tax applied at all? Sweet....(for the 'mericans) Is that because the state sets the tax rather than the federal gov?

As far as I understand .. yes.

Exactly, nobody is passing it on so when the rate rises again prices will end up going up. Last time what happened was games ended up costing something like £3.02, but rather than take the hit they just then started retailing at £3.99.

So everything will be rounded up by nearly a quid!

Even our chippie has a sign up saying his prices are VAT adjusted. What he did was to revise his entire menu at the same time so prices actually went up + he got the VAT and can yet claim he has reduced the VAT amount.

If I get the same amount of entertainment as I did from the first one, I'd happily pay £100 for MW2.

I am sure I will be able to get it of Goozex. :?

Well, you can pre order it from Argos for £35 from the link in the BArgain thread. That is already what I payed (paid?) for CoD4. I don't think any one can say I haven't got my moneis worth, and I could still probably sell Cod4 for 10-15 quid.

I agree with Lave though, this is marketeering, the price of an item is determined by demand, basic economics. This RRP gets news, gets people talking, then if people see it for <40 they will likely snap it up, meaning they get short, sharp sales early in the lifetime allowing for greater projection of usage. Hopefully allowing them to predict things like server usage to ensure the online things run smoothly. I really can't blame them for this, it is standard business practise.