I live in South Africa, and I always find it very interesting to look at price discussions etc on this site. Xbox price cuts, perfect price points etc.

I realise I am not really relevant on this site because of my location, but here are some of my thoughts.

Here on my crummy side of the planet, games and consoles are corruptly expensive. I am sure in parts outside of North America, Europe and Japan, there are places equally corrupt.

I used google to do some US dollar conversions to give you an idea of how much I have to fork out for essentially the same experience. Note, these are also some of the cheapest prices I can get online here:

40Gb Playstation 3 console (this is the only one you can get here):

4500 South African rands = 586.60200 U.S. dollars

Metal Gear Solid 4 (not special edition) from nice online store: 

696 South African rands = 90.727776 U.S. dollars

Metal Gear Solid 4 at big South African franchise store:

899 South African rands = 117.190044 U.S. dollars

Dual Shock 3 Controller just release (I got mine for less than R450 imported luckily):

709 South African rands = 92.422404 U.S. dollars

Most games here are about R600 (MGS4 was extremely murderous to my wallet):

600 South African rands = 78.2136 U.S. dollars

Anyone else from outside the above mentioned areas dealing with corrupt prices like these?

We in the US definitely have it good. Couple it with our higher purchasing power and we really have it good. Yet we still complain...lol

Europe has VAT, it's pretty expensive there as well.

The cheapest places are USA and Canada, followed by Japan and some of the Asian territories. Everywhere else it's much more expensive.

PS3 in Israel: 1150 US dollars. (still the best selling console though)

So don't complain :)

My advice: why care about those prices when you can import like me?

 My goooodness that is a lot to pay. How much for a Wii. Here, they are about:

3800 South African rands = 495.3528 U.S. dollars

^$550, which is similar to your country.

 Interesting such a big difference with the PS3? Where do you import from, if you don't mind me asking. I have tried to find good places, but run into problems.

PAL PS1 and my first PAL PS2 bought here (PS1 - $200, PS2 - $350). Everything else I imported from the USA, for reasonable prices, lol. Ah, I buy all of my stuff from eBay.

the PS3 is really ~US$440 for the average U.S. citizen, so you're really not getting ripped off that bad (only $120) considering economy of scale, and the fact that tax rates are probably higher in South Africa.

mind you that doesn't help you at all, but hopefully you can find someplace you can import from and save some $$$.

It's probably safe to say those companies haven't invested in generating hardware within that country, the that extent established lines of distribution probably attribute to a majority of the price increase, not defending them, just saying I'd imagine it would be harder to legally ship something over land or across waters into certain areas of the world over others, then to distribute them within that country.

The systems may very well have cost $USD equivocal base but with the additional overheads well...