Sony’s Andrew House has been talking to GI.Biz and was asked about the pricing of PlayStation Vita in Europe and he specifically mentions the UK.
“IÂ think we need to do a better job of explaining issues around sales tax as well. The fact of the matter is the UK price will have 20 per cent VAT included in that, the US price by contrast in LA is without the sales tax included.
If you’re buying it in California you can add another 9 per cent thanks to Arnold Schwarzenegger.”
The 3G version of Vita has an estimated UK price of £279 of which a whopping £46.50 is tax.
Andrew also revealed that the PlayStation branded 3D monitor shown at E3 will be making its way to Europe.
He also commented on the news that the footage used to promote the Wii U was taken from PlayStation games, “The only thing I’ve got to say is mimicry is the highest form of flattery.”
When questioned about the global launch of PlayStation Vita the Sony Europe boss gave a good explanation as to why Sony have yet to reveal the launch schedule.
“There’s a very good and sensible reason why we haven’t clarified exact timing in regions and geographies, and that’s as you know, we were significantly impacted by the events of March 11 in Japan.
We’ve undertaken, across Sony but also SCEE, a significant assessment of impact on our supply chain and what we think the long or medium term impact is going to be.
Once we’ve completed that assessment and have a full understanding of what our supply chain looks like then we’ll be in a position to be more specific about launch in specific regions.”
Source: GI.Biz
colmshan1990
So that’s pretty much a confirmation of a staggered release. :(
Please don’t make me wait as long as I did for my PSP.
cam the man
That was more than likely from the off.
Jim H [Teabags]
55 quid tax! Blimey, so that probably means the 3D monitor won’t be as cheap as advertised at E3. Will probs spend my money on something else.
Person678
Well it was always going to just be the US price. I feel sorry for Continental Europeans, they normally get screwed far worse on price than us.
DRCD1
You’re right. Over here in Portugal, for example, a game costs 70€ (about 60£), and the PS3 Slim costs 300€ (which is a lot more than the US price of 300$).
jcor
That’s unbelievable! Here in Ireland new games (PS3 & 360) are usually around €50.
teflon
VAT can only be blamed for part of the price, though, and can’t really explain much of the disparity between USD and the Euro. Lets look at the WiFi only prices a moment:
$250 translated today to Euros is just €174. Many places in the EU also use a 20% VAT rate, but the minimum is 15%, I believe. So add 20% on, and it’s a shade under €210. Obviously rates fluctuate, but that’s a BIG overcharge of €40.
$250 in GBP is just under £154. Add VAT and you’ve got £185.
We’ll obviously have to wait and see what exchange rates are like at release, but I hope that Sony and the retailers work towards a truer representation of the exchange rates for the eventual launch prices.
dazluss
Thanks for your example
With the current exchange rate the Euro price and the GBP price work out about the same (210 Euros is about 185 quid) so Sony are ripping us off again?
There’s also import duty maybe, even so I’m sure it’s not going to inflate the price that much.
cam the man
We in the UK always get ripped off.
maneorix
I can’t help but laugh a little at that statement cam. Compared to large parts of Europe, the UK is astoundingly cheap. If you walk into a shop to buy a new game, it’s usually around £40, and you can shop around to get that cheaper. Whereas if I were to do the same, I’d have to pay £59 (Denmark). That is just one example, but the cost ratio of most things are very similiar.
teflon
Maneorix has a point. When it comes to games, the UK might get a poor deal for the hardware, but we easily make it back on the price of the actual games, where most other places stick rather heavily to the RRP on the box. The UK sees games being sold as BIG loss leaders, so the consumer wins there very heavily.
But when you move beyond that, it’s actually clear that the EU and US are somewhat hampered by their overall economies. The UK just has to look out for itself and its economy, whilst slotting into the Eurozone. In the EU, though, the richer countries such as Germany are currently being lumbered very heavily by the single currency and propping up poorer countries such as Portugal and Greece.
Without the single currency, a game price in Portugal would be jumping up considerably, whilst in France, they might be quite considerably lower.
Of course, it’s a lot more complicated than that, but the Eurozone gets both a good and a bad deal out of pretty much everything these days because of the economic craziness.
iamtdogg
i thought that about import duty too but on further investigation video games and games consoles are not subject to any import duty in the uk so VAT is the only applicable difference.
eye8have9you3
well we already know that it’s going to be region free, might as well just import it?
cam the man
I meant the price of consoles and handhelds compared to the US and Japan. Get your point though maneorix.
maneorix
I know what you meant cam, I was just using that specific comparison. I’m sure that the Vita will cost quite a bit more in Denmark than it’s English counterpart, everything does.
Most of Europe get’s ripped off compared to the US and Japan, but the I’d refer to cc_star’s post below as to why that could be.
cc_star
Exactly, sure tax is higher than the US but like you say it only goes some way to explaining the ‘difference’ in price.
More pertinent is the exchange rate, whilst the GBP is a long way from historical averages, which is in part due to us faring less well than some nations to the economic problems of 2008, although the exchange has been recovering since last year, it still has some way to go.
Of course the big reason, that even House forgets is you cannot make cross-border price comparisons without taking into account average wages, cost of commodities, energy, rents, company taxes and general standard of living in those countries.
the question should be, how many minutes/hours work at average wage does it take to earn a PS Vita, or just use the Big Mac Index, if Big Macs were a currency, how many of them would it take to equal the Vita
(price of a Big Mac is representative of averages wage, energy, rents, company taxes, ingredients & commodities and can be a useful cross-border price comparison tool)
teflon
Yup, I just thought of using the BMI myself. A brief bit of research shows that GBP was recently quite fairly rated vs. USD, whilst the Euro was quite heavily overvalued (by 20% no less!) for a Big Mac. That was the end of last year, I couldn’t find newer figures off hand.
So in this instance it does seem that GBP is getting a bum deal, whilst the Euro isn’t getting too awful a deal. See my reply just above this for why that could be the case.
Sympozium
My god… these governments are becoming more evil
bunimomike
These are RRP prices so there might be some wiggle room at the retailer.
Jim H [Teabags]
Hopefully. There was plenty of competitive pricing going on when the 3DS launched here in the UK.
billsmugs
I’ll definitely be waiting until close to launch to pre-order mine for that very reason. Hopefully there will be be a kind of CoD style price war, but even a bundle with a free game would be good.
Burgess_101
if push comes to shove ill buy it on gamestop send it to my relatives over there and they can send it here hell of a lot cheaper
Reality Check
Maybe the UK government need the money to pay for Xbox LIVE? LoL
Sympozium
Nah they’ve already wasted money so why waste more?
Juelz345
Hahaha, because PSN is free and you have to pay for LIVE, i get it. Good one, never heard that before. Next thing you know is you’re going to tell us the cake is a lie, you funny little man you.
Peter Rushton
Might have to strongly consider importing an American version I guess :\
Paranoimia
I’d consider it if it weren’t for the fact that I’ve got lumbered with HMCE import duty on every single thing I’ve tried to import over the last 7-10 years. I swear the f*ckers have my address on a watch-list or something. :-(
iamtdogg
as per my post above, VAT is applicable as it’s over £18 worth but NO import duty on video games consoles.
Paranoimia
Don’t really see why Sony need to explain any of their pricing. It’s not like they’re the only company that do this type of thing in the UK, is it?
TSBonyman
We’ll have to wait for the teleportation tech so they can digitally distribute consoles everywhere at the same price ;)
gideon1451
That’d be nice.
a inferior race
and then teleportation tax