Steam, Origin, Epic, Twitch, Good*, *Games Sales [2007-2021]
- Thread starter trinibwoy
- Start date
- Status
Silent_Buddha
Legend
That still doesn't work as you have to take into account the local economy and average wage.
Why is that important because it all factors into the cost of doing business in that country.
If you have to pay a minimum wage monkey to sell the game that's going to already start putting lower boundaries on what you can charge. If you have to pay a lease for a store location that's going to add to it. Utilities, more added cost. Are you required to pay unemployment tax? Business licence? Business taxes? Social Security taxes? Are businesses required to pay into a government run health care system?
In the US you have to take all of those into account. And with my state having a 9 USD minimum wage for high school monkies working at game stores that already sets the labor bar pretty high. And unemployment tax (employer paid versus worked paid) is based off the minimum wage.
Lets go to that third world country. Is their labor as expensive? Are business taxes as expensive? Do they have to pay social security taxes? Is leasing store space as expensive? Utilities? Highly unlikely. Hence cost of doing business is signficantly cheaper in those countries and hence goods can be sold cheaper even if the cost to manufacture (physical goods) or margins (software) remain the same.
One way I've found to gauge the relative economic state of a country is to look at the price of prepared food (restaurants and the like), and compare that to other countries/regions. It's not foolproof as some countries have to import more food than others, but it gives a nice ballpark from which you can guage how thing will generally be priced there relative to other countries.
Just because Product X sells for Y in the US while it sells for W in some other country does not mean that the return on investment is higher in the US just because that third world country is paying less (when local currency is exchanged for US currency, which also obfuscates the true value of a product in various countries).
As to Retail vs. DD. Publishers set the price of games, not Steam. And Steam is only allowed to charge MSRP for games, they can't discount that without publisher approval. Retail stores (etail as well) can discount to their hearts content. If they want to eat into their margins they can. If they want to use it as a loss leader to attract customers to their store, they can. Hence why you see many retail stores heavily discount (and thus eat into their margins) in order to attract customers who would otherwise buy online or digitally.
EA owning Origin basically gets to do whatever they want with their product prices (as long as the product is published by EA), but even they are unlikely to risk angering retail outlets by pricing lower than them at launch. Although pricing themselves relative to the retail conditions in foreign countries could be seen as them using it as a competitive advange. [1] disallow Steam from deviating from the US retail price. [2] on Origin, price relative to the local retail market and not the US price. [3] Profit and artificially make Steam appear less attractive.
Regards,
SB
@ pchen @ budda, valid points, but this is a store that is based in the u.s pays u.s taxes, has u.s costs, pays u.s wages
their costs dont suddenly lower (or higher) just because the customer comes from a low tax country (or any other metric that applies to a physcical local store)
their costs dont suddenly lower (or higher) just because the customer comes from a low tax country (or any other metric that applies to a physcical local store)
Silent_Buddha
Legend
The taxes they pay, the infrastructure they use (datacenter's/bandwidth/etc.), any regional offices they may have, etc. will all play a part. As well as any government restrictions on doing business in said country. Unlike the US and EU, many of the 3rd world countries can be highly protectionist and actively attempt to protect local businesses and economies. You can't do business in a country without first getting approval from that countries govenment to do business in that country. At least not legally. Although direct imports/exports can skirt some of that to a degree, but you risk governement seizures of unapproved products at customs in those cases.
Regards,
SB
Unless you don't want to do business with customers in the said country (in early days you can see a lot of that happening, and for a more recent example, iTunes Music Store still doesn't exist in Taiwan), you'll want to do a lot of legal works in order to sell something in large quantities in a country, virtual or not.
And, yes, this is all about expanding into new markets. If you think your goods are only going to be popular in the US, then of course you don't have to bother with foreign markets. However, with China becomes the second largest economy, and Russia rising quickly, etc. many business do want to expand their market. As long as the price is profitable and enough to cover the fixed cost, it's worth doing.
Now we go back to see why there are regional price differentiation. Since the best price is which maximizes the profit, so, in theory, the price should be determined by demand curve and supply curve. In the case of virtual goods, supply can be seen as infinite (i.e. the supply curve is basically flat), so all you need to do is to find out the "optimal" price such that
"number of customers for the given price" X "price - per unit cost"
is maximized. Apparently, the "number of customers" for a price bracket will be very different country by country.
If we live in an ideal world where everyone uses the same currency and there is no trade barrier and CPI is the same everywhere, then it makes sense to have the same price everywhere. Unfortunately, our world is still far from that and from the current situation of Euro zone we are probably not going to be near that status anytime soon.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
As pcchen already touched on. The location of your business is irrelevant. If you wish to legally sell product in any country you must get approval of that countries government.
Again small scale import/export of goods by private buyers can skirt this issue, but it isn't uncommon for goods obtained this way to get seized at customs by governement agencies of those countries if they do not wish that product to be sold in their country.
Any large scale business will inevitably have to gain goverment approval before goods may be legally sold to their citizens.
Hence if you look at large online e-tailers, you can often find lists of goods they can and cannot sell (ship) to your country. Smaller shops will try to sneak under the radar through personal import/export. It's why black market sales of goods and products is still big in many countries.
Regards,
SB
Picked up the weekend deal for Deus Ex (Augmented Edition) + all the DLC for just over $20.
It's an excellent deal. I was suprised the game didn't receive much more awards than it did.
Anyway, I've said it before and I'll repeat it, DD prices are always higher for me than retail. I only buy DD when it's on sale and mostly they just match whatever it's selling in stores over here with the exception of those Summer/Winter sales.
It doesnt need to exist in Taiwan, it exists in the u.s or if you like in cyberspace are you saying you cannot access the itunes store from Taiwan ? what happens when you try ???
If I or my company (if I had one) setup a web site in the u.k selling downloadable games I made I cant believe i have to get permission from the tiawanese goverment to sell something to someone in Taiwan, from my point of view why would I care what country a customer lives in (except to offer the games in local currency or provide localizations)
There are no customs with direct download (remember we arnt talking about physical goods here, we are talking about bytes, hence all the conditions that would make the product have a different price Dependant on location dont apply)
None of the AA is ideal so go with whatever you prefer. I believe the MLAA option is only allowed with DX11 so that may be why it gets autoselected (if you are in DX11 mode). If you want something better, the universal SMAA inject that's around the net might be interesting.
Other stuff is also personal preference. If you have to read about it in a guide to notice it, you might be wasting your time.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
MLAA is slightly higher quality than the various FXAA options, but it still doesn't do as good a job with many of the high contrast polygon edges as MSAA would. unfortunately MSAA isn't available so MLAA is the best you've got.
If you have a Dx11 card, all of the various settings don't impact performance signficantly (in Dx11 mode) except for high quality SSAO think. I saw a performance guide for each of the various settings, but I can't remember where it was that I saw it.
Dx11 is also a fair bit faster than dx9 in this game.
[edit]
Interesting as I got the opposite impression while playing. Granted the differences either way are very slight.
Regards,
SB
You need a credit card with US billing address to buy anything in the US store, I believe.
Apple does sell "pre-paid cards" or "gift cards" in some countries, so there are people buying/selling these to work around the limitation, but that's not very practical.
- Status
