A few months ago I spoke about Games on Demand for the Xbox 360 and I was fairly excited, well, not so much anymore, I held out hope the leaked prices were just place holders for a few weeks until the whole thing went live on the 11th of August.
Australia has a long tradition of getting boned with gaming pricing, Yahtzee calls it the nicest beaches tax, and hey, we're a realitively small market and shipping costs, so I could sort of understand it, even if I did hate the fact I was paying over double of what people in other nations were.
Then comes the stupidity of the Xbox live Games on Demand service, here is the most glaring example, the prices of games aren't set by a single office, which would make sense since its an Internet service, but by the local arm of Microsoft's xbox live division, who in Australia (link) think 24/7 access is worth $50 over RRP for a 2/3 year old game!
Mass Effect is an admittedly awesome game, I've played it through 2/3 times now on both the PC and Xbox, but it is not worth $99 in download form when it can be picked up new at any major chain store for $49.95, or even cheaper at some other stores, or cheaper still preowned, an option you don't get with downloads.
Now I was all sorts of keen when it came to downloadable games, after all my ISP offers free traffic to the Xbox live service, and its hellishly fast, but come-on, no disc, and no chance of resale later if you decide the game sucks the donkey.
Not only that, but its only $20 USD for US Xbox owners... that's about $25AUD, if I didn't already own Mass Effect, I'd of been willing to pay that for it, its a good price, hell I'd of even been willing to pay $30-$35 for it, but come the fuck on, $99 you have got to be fucking kidding me Microsoft!
Yes data server space costs more in Australia then the US, but not that much more! Stop fucking ripping us off!
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