Actually, a premium for the convenience of DD is justified from a cost benefit analysis.  Not going to the store easily saves me more than $10 worth of time.  Of course, to maximize their profit, parity or slight discount to MSP (not retail) is the way to go.

@dodece

The prices in the US is also way off acording to Kotaku.com

"Games On Demand and EB Games. If you bought all 11 over Xbox Live you’d pay $559.45. If you bought them all at EB you’d pay $332.50. Admittedly you’d have a few preowned discs there, but on the flipside you could trade in all 11 once you’re done and get maybe half your cash back."

Sure for Down Under, taxes and whatnot can have an effect on price. But a 4000+ MSP difference? That huge.

Im kind of pissed!

Mass Effect in New Zealand? $50 http://www.mightyape.co.nz/search/?i=1&s=mass+effect&GoButton=Search

Mass Effect NZ price in USD incl tax = $34

Mass Effect NZ price in USD excl tax = $30

U.S. online store price = $19.99

NZ online store price USD = $67

Nasty! This was the one thing I was keen to get into. That Mass Effect should be priced at the normal retail pricing and not twice as much! I was going to upgrade my HDD and everything to get into this technology because I love DD but not now.

That argument is pretty weak, especially if you consider how companies like Ticketmaster rape their customers...

Oh hey, let's tack on a "convenience charge" for each ticket since the customer was too lazy to drive 2 hours to the venue's box office to buy their tickets in person.  How much should we charge though?  Hmmm... well, each ticket is $50 after taxes, sooooo.... lets charge an extra $20... YEAH, that makes sense!!!

Oh, and we also need to charge a "building facility" fee to, you know, to... uh... oh never mind it doesn't matter... more money for us!  We'll charge $10 for each ticket, yeah, that sounds fair.

Now how would you like to have these tickets delivered to you?  Overnight shipping?  Standard mail?  Printing them using your own ink and paper in the convenience of your own home?!?  Why sure.... that'll be $2.50 per ticket!!!

Now if you bought a pair of tickets whose combinded face value is $100... your final cost is $165!  Doesn't it feel great getting hosed?

I don't mind the prices for the US store, But MS is pretty much giving the finger to everyone else in the world by making the games so damn expensive.

wow 75 us dollars,quite a bit.Mind you living here in finland,most new games cost about 60-70 euros.thats a staggering 84 dollars to 94 dollars.
Thnakfully theres amazon...

PullusPardus said: Unclean said: Lame.

That looks much better, with the first one I was thinking, "When did Shang Tsung shave his head???"

And that really bites about the prices.  Hopefully microsoft will get their heads out of their asses, increasing the blood flow to their brains, thus possibly creating the opportunity for them to have some common sense... or not.

To give you guys an idea of how fucked up the pricing is

Here are the pricing from EB in Australia for each method of obtaining ME:

1500 MSP has a RRP of $29.95 AUD

Brand new copy of ME has a RRP of $49.95 AUD

Used copy of ME is priced at $42.95 by EB

So base on RRP it would cost me $120 to get ME through Microsoft's new service, which when converted into US Dollar with current exchange rate is over $100US

The Difference in cost is so staggering ($70-$77) that I'm now convince someone on the top of the food chain down here are MS Australia is smoking some seriously trippy shit.

The 19.99$ is still over the retail price on some of the games.

Well you know microsoft. They charge people more than what they should pay for. It's also incredible how many people still fall for microsoft's ripoff deal.