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Australian Gamers Finally Get an R-18+ Category
Dexter Herbivore writes "A lot of Australian gamers are saying, 'finally' as legislation passed parliament to support the introduction of a R-18+ category for games. From the article: 'Jason Clare, the Minister for Home Affairs has just announced that R18+ for games is set to become a reality, after legislation successfully passing through the Federal Parliament, having just gone through the Senate without amendment.'"
Each state still needs to pass complementary legislation for it to become a reality since classification remains a state issue
Whilst I know that you are trolling, I'd like to let most people know that Australians haven't drunk Fosters for more than 20 years. It's the horse piss that we export, similar to Coronas for Mexicans. Oh, and rugby is only big in 2 of our 7 states, the rest of Australia tends to prefer Australian Rules football. Most Australians don't know how to throw a boomerang, and we call shrimp 'prawns'. Drop Bears are real though, watch out for them.
Since Game went out of business, we only have small retailers, EB games and chain stores. Chances are you're right but at least we can import without classification restrictions now.
I doubt you export much of it. The piss (of this type) sold in the USA is brewed in Canada. It's even worse then 'real' Fosters.
You are wrong about Corona though. Mexicans love that piss, don't ask me why, 'Miller High Life' cost much less and tastes exactly the same.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Yep, Corona is the #1 selling beer in Mexico, the top-selling imported beer in the US and in the top 5 best-selling beers worldwide. It's quite a mystery why it's so popular.
when Australia was established as a penal colony, they only sent men and boys.
Mate, that's just plain wrong. 34% of convicts on the First Fleet were female.
Of course if it's marketed as some kind of medical evaluation for the prostrate, you can side-step the pr0n label and go right to Health Awareness
That's unlikely. Everything that is currently banned was banned because it was not deemed not appropriate for 15-18 year olds, and there was no way to have an adult rating.
Imagine trying to have 'children;s' television/books/etc. What counts as 'children's'? exactly? There is, I think, a reasonable point at which some content is not appropriate to marketed as for some ages. Even if you're not talking about sex and violence you're talking about material the child might understand (material for 8 year olds and material for 4 year olds both have no objectionable content, but they're aimed at a different level of language comprehension). That's about where australia was with games, treating them like games were only for children, and therefore had to be restricted to content that children could see and grasp.
Then some people who grew up with that stupidity got elected to australian parliament, and got real jobs and make donations to political parties. And now those poor sods down under are catching up with the rest of us.
Foster's Australian for "No Australian is dumb enough to drink this crap."
we don't
As a consumer i can't force distributors to charge less to aussie retailers, i can't force retailers to sell at a lower price. i can't force online stores to not charge higher prices for digital downloads just because i'm in australia.
my options are:
a) try and find someone online that will ship to australia with at reasonable price(incl shipping).
b) get an overseas v.p.n. possibly credit card and pretend i'm overseas to buy digital copies at a reasonable price.
c) pirate
d) give up and pay inflated prices
i spent five minutes thinking and all i got was this crappy sig
why do Aussies put up with such assraping prices?
If you want the latest AAA game in Australia you normally have to shell out over AU$100, however you can order games from anywhere in the world and if you have a PS3 you can play that game (most xbox360 games can also be played as well). The problem with ordering from overseas is the cost of shipping which can be quite expensive. There are sites such as here that normally get their games from Hong Kong and in Australia shipping is free although you may have to wait up to two weeks for delivery.
Still if you really have to have a particular game from day 1 then you have to pay the exorbitant price for it.
As for the the old NTSC and PAL standards. In Australia you would be really hard pressed to get a pure PAL TV, just about all new TV's here are HD (LCD, LCD/LED and Plasma) and are commonly 1080p with support for 720p as well as the other standards 1080i, NTSC and PAL.
Unfortunately Australia has a population of just over 22 million while the USA has a population of about 313 million (not including Canada) so in terms of consumer push Australia is fairly weak and is probably not seen as a major import market for electronic games. What is really starting to upset the major retailers here is many people are becoming aware that you can save a considerable amount of money if you buy on-line with an interesting effect that many retailers are actually meeting on-line prices if the item you want to purchase is from an Australian company.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.