I read an awful lot of occasions where people instantly complain about the price of consoles and games in the UK being too high when compared to their US counterparts and it always bugs me that people always put it down to a comparison in exchange rates to instantly denounce European prices as expensive....

More often that not - if something costs $149.99 USD it will cost £149.99 GBP or thereabouts in the UK... it can very a little, but it's a good yardstick to use. So, people instantly take the current exchange rate (around $1.75 to £1.00 GBP at the moment) and see that, in currency exchange terms, people in the UK are paying a comparative price of around $262+/- with their £149.99 GBP purchase. This seems to make sense as a reason why people would be annoyed, but what they forget is to think of the money in an earnings sense...

For example - take 1 person living in the US, and 1 person living in the UK. Both have an almost identical job. They both pay a mortgage and their usual monthly bills and have a family to look after. The UK citizen earns £15,000.00 GBP per year after tax. The comparable US citizen also earns 15000.00 - but $ USD, not £ GBP. So they both earn a comparatively identical wage in terms of the actual figures. The only difference is a currency symbol. Taking those figures, if we were to use the exchange rate rule that everyone seems to live by when they moan about the price difference, the chap in the US would pay $149.99 for his new Sony Playbox thingy, and if they were to sell the UK version taking the exchange rate into consideration, then the UK person would pay $149.99 USD divided at the exchange rate of $1.75 for £1.00 GBP, so he'd pay just £85.70... which is obviously wrong.

Working the price the way they do - so $149.99 becomes roughly £149.99 in the UK - it means that both people in each country are paying roughly the same for each console out of their native currency and earnings. Yes, there is an exchange rate, but this rate does not come into play when working out someone's earnings.

I for one am sick of people moaning and groaning in the UK when they have to pay "almost double" of those in the US for these things... it's only because the £££ is so strong (and it's weakening by the way.... especially to the Euro €) that it looks that way. We don't pay double at all - we pay comparatively the same when measured against native earnings. At the end of the day, gaming at the moment has never been cheaper. I remember forking out £130+ for a Sega Megadrive, then £400+ for a Mega CD and then on top of that another £100 for a 32X - and that was years ago, so god knows how much that would amount to these days.... HD gaming is making prices creep up a little, but when you take inflation into consideration, it balances it all out....

So - everyone in the UK, STOP MOANING about gaming being cheaper in the US. If you live in the US itself, it ISN'T cheaper at all. if you were buying from a UK perspective, it could work out cheaper, but no-one in the US walks into a store with a £20.00 note expecting to buy goods now, do they? I'm sure this blog will create loads of flaming and people just not getting it - I tried to explain this same point to a friend and they couldn't understand it. More fool them.