UK Console Costs?

[Biggerboat]

The PS3 is especially ridiculous I have to say.

I suppose the land here in the UK is way more expensive so the rent or purchase of the property by the retailer will be significantly higher. The distribution costs will be a bit higher due to smaller shipments going to a more specific location. The minimum wage is higher here so again like with the land issue the retailers will have to charge more to cover extra outgoings.

That's about all I can think of and I'm sure it still doesn't cover the crazy mark-ups.

I suppose one way you can look at it is this. If the MS isn't making any less profit on th Core 360 in the US than the UK then all of the above costs come to around 5% per console, the figure in the OP. If we apply this to all consoles then we get:

Wii - 19% more becomes 14%
DS - 21% more becomes 16%
360 Core - 5% more becomes treating UK dwellers the same as US!
360 Premium - 16% more becomes 11%
360 Elite - 14% more becomes 10%
PS3 - 41% more becomes 36%
PSP - 25% more becomes 20%

In summary Sony is completely taking the piss out of it's UK customers, N are better but still making a tidy profit from it's mark-ups and MS is surprisingly reasonable with an average of about a 7% mark-up on it's 3 SKUs.

Good thread by the way.