Article: Cashing in on the Western Audience

[Jiro]

You can view the page at http://home.eyesonff.com/content.php...stern-Audience

[Loony BoB]

What's the standard cost of a game in Japan and the equivalent in America? I do wonder how tax etc. contributes to all of this. I know when I buy things online they adjust the tax rate depending on where I am / what currency I use.

EDIT: I also wonder if they are considering the low audience there might be in America for something like this compared to Japan. I'm not 100% certain, but I think it's normal for companies to sell things at a low price in areas where they expect something to fly out the door, while in places where they expect sales to be fewer they end up putting a premium on them. Not sure why this happens as I'm no economics major, but yeah.

EDIT: Not defending anyone, merely playing Devil's Advocate and wondering why this might happen, rather than jumping to simple conclusions of "Well it costs more, it must be SE's fault."

[Raistlin]

Maybe my perspective is a bit skewed because I don't play a lot of non-free games on my phone, but $40 for a full version of the game seems insane. I agree that that's a bit of a rip off, but I'm not sure Squeenix is really fleecing US customers. SE probably had to lower to basic price for the US in order to be able to sell the game at all here. And how many people would actually pay the full $40? Or would most just pay the basic price and then buy a couple of DLCs is they like it enough?

That's not to defend the pricing disparity, which is still high. It'd be nice if they offered a full package for a similar price, to give buyers that option.