Critical Hit | The True Price of Games

Critical Hit returns with The True Price of Games, this time taking a swipe at those who bemoan the cost of games in various countries.
 

• For all purposes of this article, I cannot include every country in the world. The countries I have included make up some of the biggest gamers in the world;
• I am only concentrating on how the gaming industry is today and not comparing it to the yester-years of gaming;
• Due to the major fluctuations in prices from e-stores (such as the eShop, XB marketplace, PlayStation Store) and pre-owned games, I will be using the average price of new games releases;
• In certain instances I will use promotional prices if it is something that is consistent with the market, for example RRP of Nintendo games are normally £49.99 but you would be naive to pay such a price knowing that you could get it for £39.99 or less elsewhere. I have concentrated my efforts mainly on Wii U and 3DS, but I'll throw Xbox One and PS4 in the mix just to keep things interesting.

 

  The Legend of Zelda:  Majora’s Mask 3D

 

  New Nintendo 3DS XL

 

  Captain Toad’s  Treasure Tracker

  Nintendo’s amiibo

 

  Wii U Premium Pack

 PlayStation 4 (500GB  model)

Xbox One

Interestingly, converting on currency alone,  you can see that German and British gamers on the face value side have the  worst deal. The majority of the time the Japanese gamers have the cheapest  deal. Unfortunately, the disparity in console bundles (or lack of a PlayStation Bunduru) makes it hard to  measure them fairly, but at a glance it appears that the USA and Japan have the  best of the PS4/XB1 bundles but the gulf in prices between all five countries  is a lot larger than that of the Wii U. There is a £112 range of prices for the  PS4 and a £91 difference on XB1 but the Wii U only has a £26 difference.

There is more to look at here than just simply  converting the prices, though, as exchange rates fluctuate vigorously  throughout the year and that is just down to various market factors, political  instability, and fiscal policy… among other things. For instance, the Australian  Dollar has been dropping faster than hypothetical Koala’s out of trees, and the  British Pound took a nose dive due to the instability of the Union back in  September 2014. Multiple things affect currency prices and sometimes that can  be a benefit for companies, especially for Japanese companies as of late due to  the weakness of the Japanese Yen, which actually helped put Nintendo back into  the black in the last few financial quarters.

However, my argument digs a little deeper, and  without trying to get too economical, one must look at the minimum earning  potential in each country.

*There are many differences in minimum wages  laws across every country. Particular laws apply for certain jobs, ages and  locale)
 For the purpose of this argument, I am going to  set aside income tax because you couldn’t really fairly judge someone’s income  based on their wages alone or their personal circumstances.

The reason the hourly minimum wage should be  looked at is because these prices need to be put into the context of each  country. Sure, not everyone is on the minimum wage, yet this is a good  benchmark to see how each marketplace believes the distribution of wealth  should be handled. With the above information I have now calculated how many  working hours it takes to earn the games themselves. The lower the number, the  less time you spend at work to earn that particular game.

Hourly minimum wage  (divided by) Cost of Game = Number of hours worked to earn game

Hourly minimum wage  (divided by) Cost of Game = Number of hours worked to earn game

Country with least number of  hours worked
Country with 2^nd least  number of hours worked
Country  with 3^rd least number of hours worked
Country with 4^th least  number of hours worked
Country with most number of hours worked

 This table makes it conclusively clear that Australia is the downright winner, and effectively has the cheapest games available on the market. It is insane to  think of the PlayStation 4 SKU being cheaper in Australia considering it comes  with four games and is considerably cheaper.

The UK fares quite well against  the other countries, with the exception of the New Nintendo 3DS, which is the  most expensive in the  UK but effectively more than half the cost in Australia! The worse off gamers are the Japanese, who literally trail in nearly all of their  categories. It’s an even more of a tragic day for Japanese gamers when they see  how badly behind they are when it comes to purchasing a bundleless PlayStation  4.