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Some PS3 Games to Cost $75 in Japan
Gamasutra reports on pricing for PS3 games in Japan, where some titles may rise as high as (equivalently) $75. From the article: "Japanese game prices can vary considerably across even a single format, depending on the title. Higher profile games, such as the recent Nintendo DS title Final Fantasy III, are often sold at an increased price. Similarly, Xbox 360 titles Dead Rising and Lost Planet will be priced at ¥8,379 ($72) when they are released — ¥1,000 to ¥2,000 ($9 to $17) more than usual. Tecmo's Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 will be sold at an even more excessive ¥9,240 ($79)."
I know it's fun to bash Sony and all lately, but the caption below the title is talking about XBOX 360 games being $72. Is that $3 newsworthy?
because I'm not. I usually don't by current gen systems for the first year, and most of the time wait for them to drop in price and buy them used. Honestly, I cannot see how anyone can justify almost $800 to play the new DOA on their HD tv. ($600 system, $40 extra controller, $40 hd cord, $79 game). Honestly, aside from the wii, this will push people to the 360 as well. I will be purchasing the wii, an extra controller, and a couple of games, and that's still only going to be ~$400. It just doesn't add up sony.
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i remember phantasy star for the original sega master system cost me $80 at release in the US.
We Europeans are paying the equivalent of 75$ for PS2, Gamecube and XBox games and MS (and presumably Sony) still insist on a price hike for next gen. So Japan is paying as much for next-gen as we are paying for current gen and that's suddently outrageous?
By the way, aren't games already past the optimum price? I can't imagine that the higher price won't hurt the sales enough to decrease the profit for the whole game. Even a first semester business student knows that more expensive does not necessarily equate more profit.
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Wow, now I feel ripped off for buying those £70 N64 games. This PS3 thing is sounding better and better with every troll^Warticle Zonk posts.
I'll just get a Sorny PS3 to play on my high def magnent box for way cheaper!.
Since Sony is going to sell their console at a greater loss there, it's reasonable to expect that they would want to make more profits on their games. After all, they have to recoup their losses somewhow.
The way Sony is acting, it really comes down to fanning some sort of "digital divide." It's not about affordable gaming, it's about status -- as the PS3 will serve as the nerd's bling the way iPods used to be before they went a bit more economical.
Let's recap, shall we? High price point, Wii-mote ripoff added in, features I can't use without upgrading my TV, entertaining the thoughts of micropayments for Gran Turismo, press blunders, delays...oh and the Sony rootkit that made them scummier than usual.
The way things are going, the only place you'll find a PS3 is when you're watching MTV Cribs.
but the caption below the title is talking about XBOX 360 games being $72.
If a game is priced 72 bucks in a country where no one will buy it, does it make a cash-register noise?
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*shrug* That's what this-gen games cost in the UK now anyway!
But they're just not cranking out the new titles for the C= 64 like they use to.
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I wonder how much of this is developers trying to recoup the costs of developing more detailed content, and how much is just Sony letting developers charge more at release because PS3 units will be in very short supply. Given that there will only be a few million units available in the entire world at launch (some of which will incur no launch game sales as they'll just be resold at high markups), it seems to me that developers might have a hard time selling enough of any one game to break even.
XBox 360 games typically cost 75 euros in Ireland.
This is just a personal example someone in the UK definite knows more than me. But my sister when to work in London for 7 months.
My parents when over to visit her and said that all the food and stuff was expensive. Like 5 quid for a MickieDs value meal? which would be more than 7-8 dollars here. But the thing was that my sister was making about 7-8 quid/hr which is definitely more that minimum wage here. The argument this many yen = this many dollars should not hold up as a direct transfer to here in the US. Alot of things in Japan are more than here in the US and somethings that are cheap here are more expensive there. I need a little more detail than OMG there paying 9000 yen what are we going to be paying.
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The baseline PS3 costs $499 so you are wrong. BTW, accessories for the Wii sound ludicrously expensive if your figures are correct.
I know it's fun to bash Sony and all lately, but the caption below the title is talking about XBOX 360 games being $72. Is that $3 newsworthy?
No, but if a Sony PS3 game sells for $72 US in Japan (Yen) and a Wii game sells for $40 US in Japan (Yen), that's quite a dramatic difference.
Remember, Sony makes a lot of the profit on the game sales, and loses money on the console (almost $200 with their new Japan pricing, according to today's B1 page article in the Wall Street Journal). Nintendo makes a profit on their consoles, and also makes a profit on their games.
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The baseline PS3 costs $499 so you are wrong. BTW, accessories for the Wii sound ludicrously expensive if your figures are correct.
The article is about Japanese costs for games. In Japan, Sony's PS retails for $402 USD (priced in Yen).
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It is not uncommon for some games to be more expensive in Japan, especially if there is bonus stuff that comes along with the game. This also holds true for DVDs and other such items.
If the $75 games make their way to the US market for the PS3, however, Sony could be shooting themselves in the foot. Their console is already pricey by itself.
This could be another boon for Nintendo if thy can keep the $50 price they generally maintained for GC games. This is definitely possible since they don't need to make up the same loss on hardware Sony does.
We'll see how this plays out. I can imagine them getting away with $75 for MGS4, FF13, GTA6, and other high profile titles, but not every title.
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Sony fans, don't worry. The PlayStation 3 isn't doomed.
I'm planning to buy a PS3 at launch, along with whatever games and accessories are available, including redundant things like different types of Sony-branded connection cables. Also, I heard that Sony is selling PS3s at a loss, so I'm planning to mail them a check to try to help cover the difference. I've personally spoken to literally trillions of gamers, and every single one of them is planning to do exactly the same as me.
Based on my completely plausible and irrefutable anecdote, Sony's profits this year will obviously dwarf the GDP of most countries.
Which makes the AC even wronger. I heard it would be 50,000 yen which is around $430. So it costs approximately $180 more than the Wii. Considering what that difference pays for (HDTV, HDMI, DVD, BluRay, more memory, more CPU power, hard disk storage, web browser, music, video playback etc.) it's not that outrageous.
WTF does have to do with The cost of PS3 games?!
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Today's B1 and B6 article in the Wall Street Journal quotes a retail list price for the Sony PS3 of USD $499 in the US, E$499 ($638) in Europe, and 47,600Y ($409) in Japan.
The Wii price is USD $250 and xBox360 core console about USD $300 ($400 with big HD).
The Wii and PS3 prices are launch prices, without non-standard bundling. I believe the launch bundle for the Wii includes Wii Sports (you know, Tennis, etc) and a Wiimote and nunchuck, and I'm not sure of the PS launch bundle.
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It should be noted that most things are more expensive in Japan. The minimum wage and median salary are also higher. In general, the standard of living in Japan and the US is comparable, even though prices in Japan seem somewhat higher, it's generally balanced by higher wages. Relative scarcity makes some things (like fruit and real estate) much more expensive in Japan, but prices on a lot of consumer goods (particularly those produced domestically, like video games) generally scale with Japan's higher average wages.
Occasionally, you can get crazy bargains in Japan as well. At a hyaku-en (100 yen store) a couple of years ago, I got an 8-pack of the longest-lasting double-A batteries I've ever used for under $1.
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Glad a sony shill modded me down, well guess what? ANOTHER damn sony article coming up here on slashdot for you to troll on fanboys. Enjoy your rootkits
i was willing to cough up the $600 for your console because i really was looking forward to the new final fantasy games. i was willing to shell out for more controllers so that friends and i could play together. but between your (frankly ridiculous) up front costs and discovering that the new gran turismo is going to nickle and dime me to death (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060921-780 2.html) after already having raped my wallet (see above article), i think i'm going to give this round a miss --- i can't bring myself to buy an xbox (one of the more joyful moments this week has been discovering that i have prior art that will sink a number of ms patent applications) and there's really nothing on the wii that excites me. even just saying "wii" turns me off (i don't care what nintendo's marketing execs think: there's no way to make "i'm going to play with my wii" sound wholesome). it's a pity: i'd like to play, but you've priced yourself well beyond what i'm willing to pay.
In Japan, the Wii is selling for 25,000 yen, so the difference is $215. Also, though the GP's prices are right for the US, in Japan they're somewhat lower: $33 for remote and $15 for the nunchuck. "Normal" games look to be around $40, though Twilight Princess will be something like $68.
That said, I don't really care what the price difference is in Japan, since I don't live there (do you?). For me, the difference is $272+game ([$500 - $250]*1.088 + Wii Sports), though I'm guessing that for many people it's closer to $350 (if their hearts are set on the "premium" version). How meaningful that difference is depends on the person. In particular, I don't don't care about HDTV, HDMI, DVD, Blu-ray, Web browsing, or music and video playback, so it's something of a hard sell to me. If I were interested in Blu-ray, though, it'd be a no-brainer.
No, both consoles use a 1USD=100JPY rate for their US pricing, the Wii costs 25000 JPY, each controller 4000 JPY and each Nunchuk 2000 JPY.
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I remember paying $80 in the mid 80's for Tecmo Bowl and Zelda on the original NES...the rest of the games were around $50...bumping the price for the bigger titles has been around for a long time now...no surprise here
When I saw that CDs were around $30 Canadian I thought the shop we were in was just expensive. After a few days of shopping I soon realized that CDs, DVDs and games just cost more in Japan, but as you say, people also make more. Overall, I would say that buying power was about equal to what we have in North America, but there were some crazy deals like the top of the line Sony MD player I bought that was easily half the price of what it sold for in Canada (back when MD was still cool).
$75 game is about right for the Japanese market, and actually that seems a bit cheap compared to the C$70 price that PS3 games are going to sell for here in Canada.
*YAWN* an article about PS3 and 360 (oo even the DS gets mentioned), but only the PS3 makes the headlines. Go figure. Until all this Sony bashing started I never really paid attention to who posted the article... now I know when it's a Zonk article and when it's not just by reading the flamebait headline. Hell the only article I saw about the PS3 price drop on here was the one saying how bad it was, even tho it was what everyone seemingly wants. Slashdot... the page that makes me want to buy a PS3 more every day.
This gets modded down to troll? It certainly helps prove the point that the people posting articles in the games section have a serious hard-on to rip on Sony.
That sound you're hearing is the celebration music of Nintendo Execs, just a few days after lowering the price on the actual system, it appears that they're raising the prices of the games to compensate in the expensiveness department.
Wow, you didn't even finish reading the article summary, did you? It also mentions higher priced NDS games, depending on anticipation; do you think Wii games will be any different, in Japan?
Not to mention this pricing policy seems to be Japan only, which makes the discussion rather irrelevant for overseas markets. Having said that, the dramatic difference might still be there if you compare average prices for each console.
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Wow, you didn't even finish reading the article summary, did you? It also mentions higher priced NDS games, depending on anticipation; do you think Wii games will be any different, in Japan?
I quoted exact amounts from today's Wall Street Journal B1/B6 article on pricing for Japan, as well as pricing for US (NAm) and Europe.
My point being that there is indeed an even higher cost-of-opportunity for buying a Sony PS3. While the console price was dropped in Japan for the PS3, the games are more expensive - and if you live in Europe, the PS3 is very expensive plus the games are expensive. In the US, the console is at the midpoint between the Japan and EU pricings, and the game costs are not quite as bad.
The Wii and xBox360, however, are in fact not priced to these levels, and in point of fact the Wii games are substantially cheaper than the PS3 or 360 games.
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I can only hope that this post was due to confusion over multiple tabs being open...
In the UK, Xbox 360 and PS3 games retail for £50 ($95) inc. tax, which is about $80 pre-tax.
While Y100 usually translates to US$1, and it does in the casee of the Wii, it does not in the case of extra wii controllers. The Wiimote was announced at Y3800 and the nunchuck (and the classic controller) are Y1800 each. Just FYI.
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"This gets modded down to troll? It certainly helps prove the point that the people posting articles in the games section have a serious hard-on to rip on Sony."
Actually I thought it proved the point that not everybody feels that bad news for Sony is always FUD.
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Most of the "nerds" I know might view an iPod as a cool and useful accessory (and better than the competitors in various ways at release-time). The PS3 on the other hand is not so cool, so chances are if you buy it looking for status you're just going to get laughed at instead.
For the record, one of the things I was dreading was having to shell out to Sony, or not player any more Final Fantasy. However, all the recent ads I've seen for FFXII (That's 12, not X-2) have indicated that it's being released for Playstation-2, not Playstation-3 (or at least, not only PS3). As the Japanese release is already out on that hardware, and the N. American release being slated for early November, I don't really see it being a problem.
For future Final Fantasy games... well they have released various items for other consoles, so one can hope that if PS-3 doesn't show the user base Square/Enix wants, they'll go with another console.
Don't act like this is anything new.
You've spoken to *literally* millions? Let's say, for the sake of argument, you meant 1 million. And each conversation took 10 seconds. 10 million seconds = 166667 minutes = 2778 hours = 115 days. Assuming you spend 12 hours per day sleeping, eating, bathing and whatnot, that means you've been talking to gamers about the PS3 and Nintendo pricing schemes for the last 230 days, which seems to be longer than the prices have been known. Impressive feat!
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Dead Rising (XBox 360) New Zealand RRP NZ$129.95 == US$87.30
Sources: www.GPStore.co.nz, www.xe.com
I remember "Conker's Bad Fur Day" costing NZ$180 on N64, our dollar was lower then though.
Similarly, Xbox 360 titles Dead Rising and Lost Planet will be priced at ¥8,379 ($72) when they are released -- ¥1,000 to ¥2,000 ($9 to $17) more than usual. This really isn't news, because it was the same in the last generation. Popular games are more expensive when they come out. That's just how it is. Ninja Gaiden was 9000 yen when it came out, as is most of Team Ninja's stuff. Now you can get it for 1000 in the bargain bin.
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At least to anybody in Australia. The standard price for any XBOX 360 game out here is $120 (in AUD), which according to the exchange rate, is something like $90 in the US. I'd *love* for them to hit the $75 equivalent.
And here I was thinking that the Japanese used yen, not dollars.
To me 3800 is like 39.95, a neglectible difference introduced for better marketing.
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Bathing? What is the meaning of this term... bathing?
If I'm not mistaken, its a double wammy, as the yen is grossly undervalued.
http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity /eCS/Store/en/-/USD/SY_BrowseCatalog-Start?Categor yName=games_ps3&Dept=moviesmusic#
Any article that says other than $60 is outright lying.