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Brazil gets its own special pricing policy on Steam (and its currency)

S

Subaru

Member
These prices are really awesome, cheaper than buy in dollar
Siegfried is worried about a scenario where Real gets stronger that Valves conversion taxes, but I think this will not happen any time soon - Dilma wants to keep 1 R$ = U$ 2,00 because this is good for the economy. Valve can also change this rate in the future!
Also, we always can use DNSs and stuff to buy straight from the US - I know you can do this, Sieg. You don`t buy games at Live BR, do you? I don`t.
 
G

Guri

Member
Stumpokapow said:
The source is a prominent eastern european blogger who broke the STALKER/GSC closure earlier this year. I seem to remember he worked in marketing for games over there as well. Presumably he took an interest to the story because the Brazilian situation is basically the same as the CIS-situation, and presumably his source is a developer who was alerted by Valve and told to pick a pricepoint in time for the Brazilian launch.
Click to expand...

I really hope that it is! I am close with some people working on our market (and, in fact, I'm a developer). I knew Steam would have some changes (it began with "Classificação Indicativa", which is something like our ESRB or PEGI), but I didn't know that Valve was working on this.
 
S

Siegfried

Member
Shinriji said:
- Only 53% of the videogames players are male. A huge untapped female market is in here.
Click to expand...

Don't get your hopes up, they are mainly casual gamers playing on cellphones or ramdomly playing music games, the sims or even facebook games (if that counts).

I have about one female friend that plays the same stuff I play for every 10 male friends.

If I put Dance Central on my X-Box my girlfriend will spend the entire day in front of it playing, but God helps me if I try to play Sleeping Dogs for 5 minutes when she's home...
 
R

RM8

Member
cacildo said:
Can somebody compare these prices with the Brasilian E-shop from Nintendo 3ds?
Click to expand...
For comparison, if you set your country to Mexico New Super Mario Bros. 2 will be $62 USD instead of $39.99. At least you can easily change it to US, I guess.
 
M

Maluf360

Member
Chile >>>> Brazil

It's the only country I would like to live in South America, too bad my Portuguese will be good for nothing in there :)
 
A

AmFreak

Member
Shinriji said:
The article don't mention the first, second and third countries, but it should be the US, Japan and the UK.

Main facts from the article:

- The games industry generated 840 million reais in 2011 (about 413 million US Dollars)
- 7,1% Growth YOY
- 23% of the brazilian population plays videogames on some level (about 45,2 million people)
- Mostly plays on Console, followed by PC, Smartphones and tablets, and handhelds.
- Only 53% of the videogames players are male. A huge untapped female market is in here.
Click to expand...

So the 4th biggest market by number of people that play (what would be a very odd metric)? Cause 413 mill. $ for the whole market is far far away from 4th place worldwide.
 
M

MrChocolate

Member
Maluf360 said:
Chile >>>> Brazil

It's the only country I would like to live in South America, too bad my Portuguese will be good for nothing in there :)
Click to expand...

You know you could just speak english in Chile, right? If you stay in the capital, you can do it without any issue. Don't expect elaborated answers, tho.
 
R

RionaaM

Unconfirmed Member
subversus said:
I thought only Brazil had this problem with inflated prices. Consoles cost ridiculous amount of money there.
Click to expand...
Surely you never came to Argentina :p

But yeah, this is great news for you Brazilians, let's hope the rest of South America gets the same treatment.
 
K

KKRT00

Member
MrChocolate said:
Average is not a good indicator. Minimum wage would be best.
Click to expand...

I meant real average, for example how much public school teacher earns.

But by examples already posted i think its similar situation to Polish, that console games cost 1/10 of normal month wage.
Steam should now consider Polish market too, because we pay way too much on their marketplace [Czechs too i think]
Normal wage in Poland is something like 1900-2300 PLN and Steam asks for XCom 49E so 200 PLN.
In retail, PC games cost 99 - 129PLN and consoles games 189 - 219PLN.
 
P

Pranay

Member
Cool !

Here in India we are lucky to have cheap PC games in retail !

Though some of the publishers like EA have increased the price.

Sony has also decided to reduce the prices by manufacturing games here
 
M

Mista Koo

Member
cutmeamango said:
Well, that's the name of our currency. Real. The 'brazilian' in Brazilian Real is a mere identification of its nationality due to the probably unknown relation of currency name to country. Not a differentiation.

"Real?"
"The brazilian currency, Real."

Not

"Which Real?"
"The brazilian Real."
Click to expand...
Well we use Real as well, except we spell it Riyal.
 
M

M3d10n

Member
cacildo said:
Can somebody compare these prices with the Brasilian E-shop from Nintendo 3ds?
Click to expand...

eShop games are actually cheaper. I paid R$ 17 for Cave story, while in the US eShop it would have cost me a bit over R$20.

The only offenders are retail DD games, which are sold by the same price as they do in physical retail ($149) but aren't subject to any of the taxes and other factors that make physical retail console games expensive in Brazil. Since the eShop regions aren't ip blocked like Steam, I am sure Nintendo feared people would abuse the Brazil eShop's cheaper prices: following the same logic used for eShop-only games retail games, the US$ 39.99 games should cost R$ 69.99, which is a little under US$ 30 by current exchange rates).
 
Z

zephervack

Member
They really need to do something like this for the rest of South/Central America, people make way less than the developed world and also pay 3x as much for software, perfect recipe for piracy.

The amount of unofficial/hacked servers for Counter Strike in latin america is really sad and trying to convince them to pay for games is next to impossible.

Huge potential for profits there.
 
S

Shinriji

Member
AmFreak said:
So the 4th biggest market by number of people that play (what would be a very odd metric)? Cause 413 mill. $ for the whole market is far far away from 4th place worldwide.
Click to expand...

showmethereceipts.gif

This brazilian market data comes from PricewaterhouseCoopers, btw
 
G

Guri

Member
So, it's confirmed. And they will be using "BoaCompra" to do that. We've made business with those guys and they are ok, so it's time to celebrate.
 
B

Brazil

Living in the shadow of Amaz
We're basically fucked. The prices they've listed won't be the ones on the store.
 
M

Madrugador

Member
It's not only about prices, It's also about payment methods.

I know a lot of people that have a lot of trouble buying games because they don't have access to credit cards or Paypal.

Blizzard implemented a great service here in Chile. You can pay through Servipag, which let's you pay for a game in a supermarket if you want. It's great and with some work it could be better (by including other local payment methods).

Really hope Valve does something about this. Would be great for consumers and developers.
 
B

Brazil

Living in the shadow of Amaz
Madrugador said:
It's not only about prices, It's also about payment methods.

I know a lot of people that have a lot of trouble buying games because they don't have access to credit cards or Paypal.

Blizzard implemented a great service here in Chile. You can pay through Servipag, which let's you pay for a game in a supermarket if you want. It's great and with some work it could be better (by including other local payment methods).

Really hope Valve does something about this. Would be great for consumers and developers.
Click to expand...

Yeah, more payment options is a good thing.

But the prices probably won't be nice at all.
 
T

Tunin

Member
Thinking about it a bit more I remembered that in the last Steam Sale, for some reason, the games were a bit cheaper than the usual. I.e, the normal game price was US$ 7.5 and because my account was linked to Brazil I payed about US$ 6.75.
Maybe they've already implemented it and we didn't notice.

The only thing I'm worried about concerns payment options, I wonder if they'll accept Brazilian credit cards from now on.
 
B

Brazil

Living in the shadow of Amaz
Tunin said:
Thinking about it a bit more I remembered that in the last Steam Sale, for some reason, the games were a bit cheaper than the usual. I.e, the normal game price was US$ 7.5 and because my account was linked to Brazil I payed about US$ 6.75.
Maybe they've already implemented it and we didn't notice.

The only thing I'm worried about concerns payment options, I wonder if they'll accept Brazilian credit cards from now on.
Click to expand...

They will. BoaCompra is "bringing" Steam here, which means DOC transfers, national-only credit cards and even pre-paid cards bought on game stores will be supported.
 
T

Tunin

Member
Brazil said:
They will. BoaCompra is "bringing" Steam here, which means DOC transfers, national-only credit cards and even pre-paid cards bought on game stores will be supported.
Click to expand...

GIF+relatd..they+are+happy+tears+_77c8631540372bce01f4014c5d93d40c.gif
 
M

Maluf360

Member
MrChocolate said:
You know you could just speak english in Chile, right? If you stay in the capital, you can do it without any issue. Don't expect elaborated answers, tho.
Click to expand...

Good to know :) - I don't think the transaction from portuguese to portuñol, then to español will be so difficult as well.
 
R

RionaaM

Unconfirmed Member
Tunin said:
Thinking about it a bit more I remembered that in the last Steam Sale, for some reason, the games were a bit cheaper than the usual. I.e, the normal game price was US$ 7.5 and because my account was linked to Brazil I payed about US$ 6.75.
Maybe they've already implemented it and we didn't notice.
Click to expand...
I think that was the case with several South American countries. A friend got Max Payne 3 for 22.5 bucks, while it was $30 in US and Europe.
 
A

AmFreak

Member
Shinriji said:
showmethereceipts.gif

This brazilian market data comes from PricewaterhouseCoopers, btw
Click to expand...

Didn't have data, just thought about this:
413 mill $ is 320 mill. €. A console game costs like 50-60€ in Germany, so if u sell 6 mill. games u are already at 300-350 mill. €. And that there aren't even sold 6 mill. games in Germany per year seemed impossible to me.
Then i googled and found this:

http://www.newzoo.com/category/infographics/

They estimated 2 bill. $ in 2011 for the whole brazilian market:
http://www.newzoo.com/infographics/infographic-2011-brazil/

Germany 4.6 bill. € ~ 5.9 bill. $
France 3.2 bill. € ~ 4.1 bill. $
Italy 1.7 bill € ~ 2.2 bill. $
Spain 1.6 bill. € ~ 2.1 bill. $
 
D

dinosaur_hunter2

Member
Brazil said:
They will. BoaCompra is "bringing" Steam here, which means DOC transfers, national-only credit cards and even pre-paid cards bought on game stores will be supported.
Click to expand...
I work at the company that makes BoaCompra. I'll try to get in contact with them about the Steam deal and post any news here. I was very surprised to see that they were helping Steam on this.

Also, why do you think we are fucked? If the list above is real and could be adjusted accordingly to dollar conversion fluctuations, we would be paying a good price for the games. The only thing I fear here is some sort of region locking, that would be very stupid.
 
B

Brazil

Living in the shadow of Amaz
dinosaur_hunter2 said:
I work at the company that makes BoaCompra. I'll try to get in contact with them about the Steam deal and post any news here. I was very surprised to see that they were helping Steam on this.
Click to expand...

So we're in the same building right now?

dinosaur_hunter2 said:
Also, why do you think we are fucked? If the list above is real and could be adjusted accordingly to dollar conversion fluctuations, we would be paying a good price for the games. The only thing I fear here is some sort of region locking, that would be very stupid.
Click to expand...

I just think it's a smart move to keep expectations low.
 
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