international nut of pastry - I think this lines mostly filler.

Whilst this rant is specific to Sony, in reality it's more about the Australian video games in general.

For many years (possibly decades) Australia has had a weak dollar exchange rate with the US and as such, many gamers had grown accustomed to paying a a premium for our video games - around $100AU for a console game. This price wasn't acceptable, but we dealt as there was no real way of getting a (legit) copy of a game imported any cheaper than what we could get here.

Shortly before the Playstation 3 was released, Playstation 2 games started being having a recommended retail price (RRP) of $90AU

Enter the "very good exchange rate" character.

As I write this, the week before GTA 4 is released, the RRP for it is $120AU. The RRP for GTA 4 in the US is $59.99US. And as of tonight, $59.99US = $63.91AU.

Uhm... Where's the extra $56.09AU going? I know for a fact it costs $11US to get one game sent on a plane from the US to my door step, and surely Sony or Microsoft could get a much better deal than any consumer could get. So I ask again, where is the extra $56.09 going?

It was made very clear before the PS3 was released on our shores that Sony thinks very little of Australia simply because of it's smaller population and therefore lower numbers of people buying the console and games. And for some strange reason that only makes sense to people in the world of suits and 7 Series BMWs, they jack up the Australian prices on games on and consoles.

Now obviously this isn't just Sony screwing over Australia, Microsoft do it as well with the price of new games. The only difference is, with the current generation of consoles, PS3 owners at least have a choice.

In a strange move, probably more to do with mod chips than anything else, PS3 games are not region coded. What does this mean? Simply put - the copy of GTA4 I ordered from the US will work flawlessly in my PS3. Whilst this allows me to save huge dollars, it seriously hurts Australian video game retailers. I would much prefer to purchase my games from the local GAME store, keeping the dollars in my own country. But it's just not smart for me to buy games in my own country.

I hope that more people start to import the games they want, I also hope that the number of importers doesn't start to hurt local stores too much before Those Who Wear Suits see the decline in sales and spontaneously decide to lower the prices. Though judging by their current logic, if they see smaller sales figures, they're likely to raise prices thinking that will help.