Fbh
Member
This might come across as entitled and I'm not sure how relevant it will be around here since I know a large portion of GAF users are from North America and Europe (though I know there's still a lot of people from other places)
But having gotten a taste of playing on PC over the past couple of years (playing on a laptop though) has really made me wish MS or Sony would embrace some form of regional pricing for next gen. In threads about game prices around here you often see the argument that games have been USD $60 for a long time, but in other places where imported goods usually fluctuate in price depending on the exchange rate, game prices have shifted considerably over the years.
For example, back when I worked in gaming retail (2009.. or 10) here in Chile the price of a new console games was usually around CLP $30k to $35k, now a new game like TLOU2 or Ghost of Tsushima is around CLP $50k - 55k, that's an increase of over 60%, and if next gen sees the standard price of console games raising to USD $70, the difference is only going to increase. In a country where the minimum wage is around USD $380 and the average income isn't that much higher at around USD $700, console games are becoming less and less accessible.
On PC it's a different story. Almost every major storefront like GOG, Steam and Epic has been offering regional pricing for some time now, and even though prices may vary quite a bit from one publisher to the other, overall it has allowed PC games to be much more affordable. Despite only having a 1050ti, I've often found myself buying most third party games on PC instead of my Ps4Pro because the price difference is just too big to ignore.
I'd also imagine that since all of these storefronts have continued offering these price they must have data to support that increase in sales volume makes up for the decrease in revenue from each sale.
At least to me, if either Sony or MS adopted some sort of regional pricing next gen it would be a major factor when deciding which one to get.
Otherwise going all in PC continues to be a tempting option. Despite the much higher hardware cost, between regional pricing, third party key resellers and free multiplayer, I'm starting to think the lower cost of games will end up paying for the hardware in the long run.
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