Do not buy Australian

According to our records, it’s been 6 months since I did a little bitching about Australia and all of the bullshit that’s going on with the country at the moment that most people don’t seem to be aware of in their daily lives… not that me bitching about it in the first place will turn any heads, but whatever…

In previous rants, I’ve discussed the lack of an R18+ rating for video games and also censorship in relation to the evil child porn filled internet… one look will turn you into a paedophile, so beware. I think out of the two, it’s probably better to play video games and become a mindless mass murderer than the creepy alternative. It’s almost as if the Australian government has become like a prison security force and is governing a nation of convicts… oh wait.

Of course, the whole issue of censorship is just one of the problems with Australia…

I strongly consider paying $100 (that’s Australian dollars) per game much too expensive. In fact, I refuse to buy any game for that price and of course smart shoppers feel the same way and seek out much more competitive prices from places like JB HiFi, Big W, Target, etc. But if we’re talking full price games, it’s ridiculous to see some of these games being sold for $120 for the standard version.

Australia doesn’t have a very large population, there are around 21 million people and among them are only are handful of gamers. So, it’s no wonder that games end up being so expensive to begin with… in fact, I don’t really blame publishers when it comes to their high prices. It really is just the nature of publishing games in such a small market. That said, it still doesn’t help things when the cost of getting games to the store shelf ends up being so high for publishers. I hear the OFLC classification fee itself is pretty high, so high in fact that a large number of WiiWare games aren’t being released in Australia because of it… or at least being delayed for an undetermined period of time…

Of course, the high prices we pay for video games are only after we end up waiting a billion years for them. Australia tends to wait months for some games to be released while the rest of the world has been enjoying, whatever, for all this time. Again, the lack of population is the reason Australia has to sit around and wait for things to be released. Certain games won’t even get released down here unless they’ve seen significant profits in other regions…

I feel like all of these publishers are doing charity work when it comes to releasing games in Australia… I mean, when I think about it, if every video game just stopped being sold in Australia, would it really make a difference for all of those companies? It’s not like a few thousand units of a game or console really means anything compared to the millions being sold in other countries.

Hell, I almost feel like they really should just stop everything down here and just have online stores stock up so that Australians can just order all of their video games from the net and have it all imported. It’s cheaper… you’ll get the game earlier than you would’ve if you wait for the Australian release.

Even now, Wii games are $20-$40 cheaper than PS3 and 360 games down here, but if I went on eBay or some online store, I could fine an EU release of the same game for cheaper including the postage costs… and that’s very sad.

There really isn’t any point in buying Australian, but I guess we’re all stuck with the way things are down here.