Grandmastersexsay :
Because your big government love affair costs a lot of money. Duh. ...
I do hope that was supposed to be a joke, as up to now I've come to
expect better from people in the US in terms of how they perceive the
outside world. And btw, it's the
US govt which atm is happily
spying on anything that moves witout debate or consent of its citizenry
(did you know that your constitutional rights do NOT apply to metadata?
Now that's what I call a gotcha), and also on foreign nationals in a
manner which is no better and perhaps worse than the methods criticised
by the US as being employed by other nations like China (indeed, your
govt is using methods that would not be legal in the US; it's like a
digital Guantanimo). Anyway, I digress...
Higher EU prices are partly due to the money made by distributor
companies such as THE Games, and partly because EU consumers are simply
willing to pay those prices. Distributors know from past experience what
kind of pricing levels the public will tolerate and so the retail pricing
is adjusted accordingly in each country. This is why, when the N64 first
went on sale, it was 165 UKP equivalent in Germany (pretty close to the
US retail dollar amount) but a whopping 250 UKP in the UK; people in the
UK were happy to pay that much, though a hefty price drop a few weeks
later caused a heck of a row and numerous compensation payouts from THE
Games. I knew some people at Nintendo back then (I had the first ever
web site on the N64 before it launched), they said such pricing issues
were annoying, but largely out of their hands.
I don't know who handles distribution of such systems these days, but I
expect the same issues still very much apply.
Ian.
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