Why are prices of consoles and games the same in USA as in Europe?

[siphillis]

Lafiel said:

Alby_da_Wolf said:

Viper1 said:

Europe has far more logistic and linguistic difficulties than the US so those extra expenses are padded into the consumer costs.

Not in general, France and Germany, for example, may have the linguistic extra cost, like any not English speaking country for most games, but they have excellent transports. Eire has no linguistic barrier and more than decent transports, not to mention that it attracted a lot of IT corporations thanks to the good infrastructures it offered them, not to mention the investments on education. German VAT is quite lower than EU average too. And USA is not all rosy, there are a lot of places that require long distance transports to reach low population density local markets, this should raise the cost to reach the American province more than to do the same with most European ones. So it's quite safe to say that at least in Germany, France and Eire games are overpriced with a 1:1 $/€ parity.

Well, here in Germany the retailers afaik have a lot more expenses (than in the US) for their workers and pay more taxes, which is why shops need to get more money from the products they sell.

So retailer margins might very well be another reason why it's 1:1 $/€.

you always have the option to import the games from the uk which equals 44€ for most games including shipping which is about 20€ (about 30% off) cheaper then in most stores. same applies to consoles.