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Leadified on 26 September 2017
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Ka-pi96 said:
Leadified said:

It has to be determinal to you to be discrimination. I'm still using less of my income proportionally to buy a game compared to a Mexican, how am I being discriminated?

Steam games (not sure about others) are cheaper in Brazil than they are in the US, so your example doesn't work there. Do you have any evidence to suggest that the decline of Japanese games has anything to do with game prices and not the economic and social situation in the country? Anyways, if you check SteamDB you can see that Japanese games either match, lower or higher than the US price. Again, I'm not sure about consoles but I can't imagine it's much different.

Determinal? You mean detrimental? Well the world's bigger than just Mexico and US and/or Canada? (you're in Canada right?) And I'm in the UK, where average income is lower than the US (and Canada!) while game prices are higher and therefore us Brits are using more of our income proportionally to buy games. So how's that for detrimental?

I'm not sure about Steam, but I know Japanese console game prices are definitely higher than the UK (which is higher than the US). And while I don't have any evidence to suggest higher prices has led to a decline in Japanese game sales, I do remember there was a drop in sales when the tax rate rose (I believe it was only about a 2% increase), so clearly price is a factor even if there are other more important ones.

It's not perfect (just like my grammar & spelling, and yes I am Canadian) because it's not that simple to adjust for living and income so it will never be 100% "fair" if you want to look at it that way.  I always thought you guys had it good in England, £40-45 for new games? It's more like £55 here after tax.

Anyways, price is always a factor but I don't think it's the sole reason console sales collapsed in Japan. Or maybe price along with culture contributed to the rise of handhelds and mobiles there, who knows. It would be interesting to find out though.