Questionable videogame pricing in Australia is no news to us. We know that prices over in the US are less than what we pay here, and yet we have no legitimate reasons as to why. Luckily our government is taking notice, launching an enquiry into high technology prices in Australia, which has just recently been closed of submissions.

Of those submissions, consumer advocate group, CHOICE, has made a very indicative table of the stark differences that exist in video game pricing. The table compares a list of recent PC games on the digital distribution service Steam, and 20 recent and upcoming games from EB Games, to their US pricing.



At first glance you can already see the huge mark-up value in titles like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which retails in Australia for AUD$89.99 whereas the US price is a low USD$19.99. With a 342% difference between the regions, it already begs the question of why a game that is nearly three years old is priced at what is considered a new game.

For PC games sold through EB Games the price difference isn’t as large as Steam, however, it is still quite obvious (the highest is 73%). Note that GST accounts for 10% of the price.



While this obviously won’t be news to the more knowledgeable shoppers, it definitely sheds some light on the somewhat extortionate pricing that is going on in the technological market of Australia.