@ NJ5: We pay more, that is why we bitch. 'Nough said. No matter what "excuse" you give it, the fact remains we pay more.

@papflesje: I know, in fact I said so in my post, did you read all of it? I'm not giving excuses, just explaining the reality of the situation.

BTW, I'm also European. However, I don't make a big deal out of something which is a consequence of the weak dollar, especially because I'm not even sure those consoles' manufacturing is paid in dollars.

The weak dollar also gives me some advantages like getting very cheap games from sites like play-asia.

Here in Denmark it's 25%..

Also think we are leading in that area.

"here in united states it is 7.25% for the highest tax state, california."

I'm sorry, you need to do better research.

1 Tennessee 9.35%
2 Louisiana 8.70%
3 Washington 8.45%
4 New York 8.25%
5 Oklahoma 8.15%
6 Alabama 8.00%
7 Arkansas 8.00%
8 California 7.95%
9 Texas 7.95%
10 Arizona 7.80%

And realistically, most of those are higher. I live in Arizona, and I typically pay more than 8% thanks to city/county tax.

http://www.fairtaxation.org/facts/sales_tax_rank.php

Anyway, VAT works in a totally different way than sales tax, so it's pointless to compare them directly.

And on top of that, there is a difference in the buying power of a Dollar and a Euro. While conversion rates highly favor the Euro, meaning it's good for Europeans to travel to the U.S., basic costs of living are still practically 1 to 1 in most places.

You almost certainly earn more, too.  So quit your bitching.

Like, for example, the French minimum wage is 8.71 Euros compared to the U.S. minimum wage of $5.15

sony most likely doesn't pay production costs in dollars, most of the parts for all consoles are produced in south east asia. not sure on the cell i think ibm has their fabs in us, but i'm not sure if sony lets ibm produce all cells for them or if they also use fabs for hire (like TSMC who produces the gfx chips), or does sony even own a processor fab that can do 65nm soi process?
so a low dollar probably hurts sony in us market, but probably doesn't help them in european market unless the euro is also at a high standing compared to the yen.

I'd like to clarify a few things about the EU and taxes because many people here are describing them as much higher than they really are.

The import taxes on computers and consoles has been at 0% for a few years now (yes, there used to be a ~18% import fee on consoles but that has been set at 0% since 2004). Those import fees are EU wide, so all EU countries use the same value of 0%.

(See also http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=31540&page=2)

VAT still applies obviously, at ~16-25% depending on country.
Environmental taxes are less easy to estimate, each country has their own system. At any rate they are not in the 10%+ range.

So, for the sake of argument the EU could be said to have some 18-25% taxes on consoles in total. Naturally sales will be converted to the local currency of whoever makes the machines so that's dollars for Microsoft and yen for the others.

I'll assume a 25% flat rate to make this easier, even though that is the high end of things.

MS Xbox 360 Pro:
€279 with 25% tax => €223,20 pre tax.
In local currency that is $348

PS3:
€399 with 25% tax => €319,20 pre tax.
In local currency that is 53716 yen (And in dollars it's $497)

Hope this helps clear things up a bit.

"sony most likely doesn't pay production costs in dollars, most of the parts for all consoles are produced in south east asia."

Many countries in Asia go out of their way to keep their currencies relatively stable in relation to the dollar, so they might as well.

"but probably doesn't help them in european market unless the euro is also at a high standing compared to the yen."

The Yen is one of the aforementioned currencies that is artificially held to a near constant with the Dollar.

@ChichiriMuyo:

The dollar has dropped significantly against the Yen and the Yuan. I'm pretty sure at least some of the expenses involved in making consoles are in at least one of those.

The Yuan used to be pegged to the dollar, but now it's pegged to a wider basket of currencies. The dollar dropped 15% against the Yuan since then if I remember correctly. Against the Yen, the dollar also dropped a lot.

Seems to me that looking at production costs in dollars might be a wrong approach; they may vary significantly with time.