It's probably because volumes are so restricted atm.
On other products Sony probably have the internal price set lower and then make it up with distributor margin then pay a higher level of local corporate tax by booking the profits locally. Or they manufacture stuff locally, I know they make Vaio laptops and Xperia phones in the country. The Xperia ZQ, for example, was a specially locally manufactured SKU of the ZL.
Sony won't sell at a loss though, basically with the PS4 it looks like Sony want the income/revenue to be booked in Japan rather than in Brazil, my guess is that they need to show a decent level of profitability to ensure there are no more tax asset writedowns on Japanese DTAs.
Exactly, people here are behaving like the folks on Facebook, making no sense at all. There´s nothing wrong with Sony charts, they wouldn´t be crazy to release a document with mistakes to later on be corrected by the IRS or tax experts. Of course they put the max on everything, but it´s OK.
The only real variable here is the price they are initially declaring. Of course they don´t use MSRP for Vita and PS3, but they chose to do this for PS4 for logical reasons.
Everyone knows they are supply constrained. They know their die hard Brazilian fans like myself will get the PS4 some other way, so they will have like 5-10k units to sell it here.
If it´s guaranteed to sell out at 4.000, why make such a hassle to sell it for less? If they needed a compatitive price there´s no way in hell they would start at USD 390.
It´s the oldest trick in the book here, people are crazy to think that the local IRS has this crazy system to detect every little detail. Microsoft has probably declared the Xbone at USD 199 and this makes the whole thing more plausible. It´s not like the local IRS can audit them and prove that they can´t get the Xbone at 199 so they are lying.
People are flipping out over something that it´s not new. Hopefully this spotlight is a way to force the congress to pass the law that changes the way videogames are taxed, from gambling to computer software. (it´s stuck in the house since 2007).