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The parliamentary inquiry designed to tackle high technology prices in Australia, including game prices, is set to close submissions today.
Spurned on by Federal MP for Chifley, Ed Husic, the inquiry has received 35 submissions so far and will analyse why there’s a price discrepancy between the US and Australia for things like games, consoles, software and tablets.
As long as the postmark is today, you’ll be fine. [APH]
Image: Cimexus / Flickr
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I got my submission in but it seemed pretty lame compared to some of the other responses. I just wrote a 2 or 3 page letter but one of the other submissions I read was like 20 pages, with sources and references and all kinds of stuff going on. People are really hitting this issue hard.
Its quite a valid issue how we often pay so much more. Good to see people are going in dept though for all the proff required.
This investigation will likely lead nowhere in hurry. You can only gauge that on how well we perform as a country that lacks leadership and follows along sheepishly at best. I’m not sticking to government but on whole how much do we stand up and fight for what is realistic as opposed to what we are in TV land doldrums watching elsewhere on the globe. So if you think a few petitions and reports will make a difference it may be time to work toward ending this stupidity.
Seems I’m putting it out there, I suggest that think about how you would fight for change to getting better prices for games. Firstly – don’t buy anything pre-order anymore. This will upset a few people but you will still get your game if you decide to bow to commands EA and Activivsion as a motive of taking almost 300% profit on some games sold in AU an NZ. You are being ripped off and so be it if you are that stupid.
But you have to think about the big picture. As a small island in the south pacific Australia is rather small an insignificant in the gamer community. Look at gamer numbers in Europe, UK, USA and South Korea, Japan individual and you will find that we are not considerably big at all. So does that have impact – YES. The small percentage (AU bureau of statistics and fair trading indicators) would suggest Au doesn’t have ability to purchase under a mainstay (single entity distributor for AU). You will find that after a 2-3 week cooling period on any game release in AU the price will drop by about $20AU, so buy then. What are you losing out on for 2 weeks. Ask yourself to be patient, it is not a race to finish first but longevity in game play is where entertaining should be focused but it isn’t.
I can tell you that saving your money for sales or waiting for the price drop may not be fair but it will hurt the retailers if enough people start this trend. The action of you doing instead of saying you will, over the period that it takes is better for all than just making whimpers to a foreign entity who really doesn’t give a damn anyway. Just look at its track record.
It will take more that what I suggest.
just as a further aspect of buying here to elsewhere – you would best look at getting an international copy direct form Hong Kong. the game will not incur tax if you go through the right chain of support. Don’t use Ebay or anything like that – you might not get what you paid for. The savings made here are GST + import duty. The game will generally be posted on the release date and postage is usually free – direct to your door if you find a good distributor – Hence you are now looking for a wholesaler direct. That should help you to reduce the cost that will continue anyway because AU is full of people who want it their way but are too damn lazy to effort a revolution.
Yeah but 35 submissions is a pretty paltry number.
Though I will repeat what I said in a post about this a couple of weeks back…I really don’t see the need to make submissions on this. The government obviously already knows that there’s price discrepancies or they wouldn’t be doing the inquiry in the first place. This also isn’t the same kind of situation as the R18+ thing where they were after public opinion and feedback on the issue – this inquiry is happening anyway and I really can’t see what information the public can possibly provide that the government can’t find themselves.
I don’t think they’re so interested in the content of the submissions. They’re all gonna say the same thing anyway – “stuff should be cheaper!”. Although with only 35 submissions I’d worry that a good proportion of those would be from the actual software companies saying “we have to charge more to cover shipping all those 1’s and 0’s down that long wire to Australia”.
I think they’re more interested in the actual number of submissions as an indicator of how many people actually care much. Although I have to say this thing hasn’t really been given that much publicity so I wonder how many people even know about it.
What they’re looking for is submissions from the public on the kinds of experiences they’re having, to get some insight into the kinds of questions they should be asking and areas they need to be looking at. They know it’s a problem, they want to hear from the man in the street what the specific issues are. I don’t see how it’s a bad thing.
Would be nice to see some positive outcome for consumers, although I wouldn’t hold my breath.
With the amount of money we spend on games, fixing this will fix the deficit. So it’s not just gamers that can enjoy the fruits of lower game prices…
Just doing the math here… A reduction in price of 20% of games will fix australia’s trade deficit. This is based off estimates of how much australia spends on games and how much a game costs etc.
There should be more submissions with actual content, not just I pay more on steam. It’s embarrassing that out of those submissions only one or two are worthy of consultation. Having said that the submission by Daniel Myles is well worth a read, and extends ‘our’ concerns to ears that might listen.
Also, if you’re going to write to a parliamentary committee edit your pieces and create a succint and sound argument on the issue. On a side note If I was on the ball, I would have wrote on the issue beforehand.
Yes we should be able to pay less for games, eb games charge 110 dollars for games, though lately the games have been alot cheaper i picked up some of the new games for $59 dollars which is very reasonable.
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