Commentary on Euro Pricing Flamefest

[RichC]

Thats great except why would EA\Harmonix use UPS to ship 2 units of Rock Band to Europe? Also I can order the full instrument pack and game from someone in the US on ebay for £120, how can they afford to do that and still make money yet EA\Harmonix cannot?

Oops. There goes that excuse.

In all fairness - that £4 quote assumed it was my container ,I drove the container to the port and picked it up at the other end and didnt bother getting the container back!

[rossi12345]

this is one of those rare times when i can say i am Proud to be American!

[CaptCastle]

this is one of those rare times when i can say i am Proud to be American!

Why proud? I could understand glad, glad not to be gouged, yup that's understandable. But proud?



Oh my mistake, you were just trying to upset people. I get ya.

[iapetus]

In all fairness - that £4 quote assumed it was my container ,I drove the container to the port and picked it up at the other end and didnt bother getting the container back!

At least some of those costs are incurred regardless of where the goods are being shipped to, though. The idea that massive fuel costs are to blame for the whole affair clearly doesn't hold water, and even if the costs were increased tenfold it still wouldn't cover the markup on the Rock Band price above and beyond the normal 50% we see with other goods.

I'd also expect that EA can probably negotiate better prices than you getting a single quote, probably with discounts for bulk - I'd imagine that they were planning on selling more than 450 copies of Rock Band. Well, before they announced the price, anyway.

[Fleppie]

I must say that I am really dissapointed in the pricing of Rockband for us Europeans. I don't know how you can justify such a high price-tag in comparison to the us price-tag. I have been a big fan since guitar Hero 1, have bought both guitar hero 2 & 3 on the day of release. Hell I even own Guitar Hero 2 on both the ps2 and the 360. (http://www.gamespot.com/users/Fleppi...table?mode=own)

But I am cancelling my pre-order for Rockband. i am not getting shafted for liking a product, sorry. Though we still get shafted most of the time in terms of pricing (always 10+ more expensive) and timing (+2-4 months waiting period) this shaft is waaaaay too big. Sorry, but this just sounds too greedy to me.

Come to think of it, this crap started with the crazy high price for the DLC for GH2. Nope, not supporting anymore.

Stop being greedy please.....

[CM_Drunk]

How would you justify GHIII being cheaper? Activision likes to lose money? The GHIII guitar is cheaper to manufacture than RB one? If so, the price would have been different in USA too. No, IMHO there's no justification other than EA wanting to milk gamers, as they often like to do.

Something tells me that, if Harmonix was still working with RedOctane/Activision on this, all this wouldn't have happened, and probably we would't have waited so long for the game coming in Europe.

GHIII bundle isnt even remotley close to the size of a RB bundle.

So EA, just use UPS and cut down the costs

Good luck getting UPS to tie up half their air carriers shipping the necessary freight to cover demand. Its not practical. Thus, your stuck to shipping via sea. It would be alot easier for my company to use UPS to ship 50 pallets containg 30 oriental rugs per pallet by air. They wont do it.

[hip]

A very good question, indeed. My only guesses to this, is that the OP has mentioned that he cannot, will not and should not disclose their exact costs.
Not many (if any) companies will break down their overhead to profit ratios.

I ventured a guess that maybe, the hightnened potential costs of RMA'ing equipment might factor into it, and again im not saying thats fair to the European consumer, and I dont even know if im right.

My only point in posting in a thread which doesnt affect me AT ALL other then liking playing video games with people across the world, is that it makes no sense for them to overcharge you just because they feel like it. Or because they belive you will just pay up naively (is that a word?) and not ask questions.

With a community like this, where even FREE DLC given away results in ridiculous backlash, they must have realized that this price was going to piss people off. They must also realize that their only real competition in this genre is half the price. And if they could justifiably get it to you at a cheaper cost, they would as it results in more units sold.

except if their plan was to use big marketing campaigns and hype about how it is a very special experience, and not a game anymore, and then as a consequence it should be pricy, and they thought they could get away with a high price because of the "special experience" aspect that they thought europeans were ready to pay big money for.
if it was their plan, they did something wonrg : they should not have announced the price until the release

[Uncutlateralus]

Damn gaming forums are buzzing with this issue.

Well I havent had time to read all the posts (I work in a laboratory all day ) so i'm not going to try and give facts and figures to counter the guys apparently defending this pricing stupidity...however.....

Although alot of what HMX are saying regarding the damage control is correct its just NOT good enough.

Yes Vat adds expense, Yes shipping costs are higher to EU but is that the sole reason for the massive cost hike? COME OFF IT...never heard so much rubbish in my life. Im more than happy to pay a extra 25% or so to cover these costs, its the price you pay for living in a region with a stronger economy.

There just is NO excuse for the price margin to have increased by such a massive amount...the shipping excuse is the most comical....If the cost is so bad why was my 32" HD plasma television not twice the price in other regions? If the costs are so high to ship from the states then why the hell didnt they just make the kits in China or India?

If it costs this much to ship to Europe imagine the poor folks in AU (which I may add STILL dont have a release data)?

The whole things B*ll*cks ......cheers for listening <end rant>

[hip]

Lol Aussies better not break their kits

[HMXGLo]

There have been some questions on this thread about why we didn’t simply ship full bundles including the software in Europe, as we did in the US. It is a good question, and the answer isn’t totally obvious. Like the last post, this is my unauthorized personal opinion, and carries no official weight. That said, here are some reasons why:

1. The peripherals are manufactured in China, but the software is manufactured in Europe. In order to bundle the software, we would need to set up a bundling facility in Europe, ship the software and peripherals to it, open each box to insert the software, then re-pack it into containers and route it to the distribution centers. This is very expensive to do in Europe, and we are actually focused on trying to keep costs down; see earlier post. It isn’t really possible to do the bundling in China, since the peripherals shipping is done by boat (airfreight would be insanely expensive for boxes that big), and the peripherals need to leave China before the software development is complete.

2. The game disc and peripherals are identical for all European territories, but the manuals have to be localized for each country, so in practice the software package is different for each country. That means that for each territory that we launch into (currently UK/France/Germany), we’d need to build and track separate bundles. If we were to launch into additional territories in the future, then we’d be obliged to track even more unique bundles. This also has big inventory-management challenges. For example, if the game ends up selling really well in Germany, but not in France, then we’d have a warehouse full of French bundles and no inventory for Germany. For a region like Europe, it just makes more sense to treat the software and hardware separately. This wasn’t an issue in the US, since it’s one giant (mostly) English-speaking country.

3. Given that the game is expensive (which we acknowledge), we want to provide some alternate options for purchase than the entire bundle at one go. If you already own a USB microphone, it will probably work with Rock Band. Depending on the console you own, other controllers you own may (OR MAY NOT! See lengthy commentary elsewhere on this forum) work with Rock Band. Providing standalone software and peripherals may give you an opportunity to get into Rock Band at a lower price, depending on your situation.

I hope this helps to answer that specific question.