Or, for our Argentinian readers who do live in Argentina…I’m sorry. So sorry.
Americans have it made. Gamers in Europe and Australia (and elsewhere!) pay a lot more, comparatively, for games and hardware.
But the PAL Tax is nothing on what gamers in other markets, like those in South America, face. Small consumer bases
As is the case with many markets in South America – Brazil being another major culprit – the price of gaming in Argentina is a little silly. A smaller consumer base means everything from distribution to retail costs more, and that leaves gamers there with…quite the bill if they want to buy a PS4.
Sony is selling the console for $US6500 (that’s Pesos). Which translates, roughly, to around USD$1100.
Crazy, right? Well…it is. Kind of. Consider this, though: that’s Sony selling the product officially. Through its own retail channels, and with the offer of a full warranty and support, a rarity in the region. So on the one hand, good Lord, that’s expensive. But on the other, hey, good for Sony for at least making the effort.
You can of course pay a lot less by importing an American console, which is what a lot of people will end up doing. It just won’t have the same warranty, etc as an official Argentinian model.
Comments
12 responses to “Think The PS4 Is Expensive? Be Glad You Don’t Live In Argentina”
Surely it would be written as ARS$6500? Regardless, that is a ridiculous amount to pay, especially considering it’s direct from Sony.
Pretty sure they have a MASSIVE grey import market in south America.
Yeah.
A bit of world knowledge would help: Arg has massive inflation as they’re using their highly devalued money to pay off foreign debt quicker/cheaper.
No-one actually buys their currency at the current rate; there’s a black market for their actual REAL internal currency that citizens use.
This works out to around $650 US.
Google Argentina Inflation and look at the last seven years.
I read that this is only based on the official exchange rate, which is about 6 pesos to $1. The more realistic exchange rate sees a conversion to about $700 or so. Expensive still, but not ludicrous like the $1100 figure.
Argentina is also in the middle of a period of pretty damn high inflation, they only officially got the X360 in the last year, that was selling for about US$400 and that was just for the 4GB version.
So whilst the price is high, it’s not exactly Sony being dicks, they are just setting a price relative to the Argentinean market.
That’s a lot of money to spend to take a dive in Fifa 14.
Argentina is usually the best team.
I am from argentina, and yes it sucks, really you can get it a bit cheaper in the grey market but no that much. The best thing to do is asking a friend that travels to de US to get one for you. The games are also expensive. five times your price at least,
…and yet we complain that the price for the PS4 in Australia is too high
$1100 Hey!, that’s what I paid to get my PS1 in from America when the first came out and they weren’t avaiable in Australia yet 🙂 Yep I had about about 3 weeks of being the first to have one, hahah.
When I was working at GAME, i consistently had people coming in mentioning how cheap the stuff was here. This was at standard pricing too, we all thought they were crazy. I asked a dude regarding it once and yea, e said the taxes are really high and make it really expensive. He also said it was really hard to find anything as well, he was from Brazil. They used to pick up PS2 stuff in droves, went mad for it. Awesome for moving back catalouge PS2 P/O games. A fair few bought the chunky PS#’s and shipped them back over as well. A suitcase just for your console? Still wold have been cheaper though.
I guess little Harrison Morgan won’t be getting a PS4 when he leaves Miami 🙂