1P Start

As a gamer living in the UK I’m used to being treated as a second class citizen by games companies.

We in Europe tend to be the last to get consoles released, with the possible exception of Australia, and some games don’t even ever make it here. If they do, they tend to be priced extortionately higher than they are in Japan and America.

So it is with Rock Band. It’s taken six months to get here, it’s only initially being released on the Xbox 360, with PS2, PS3, and Wii owners having to wait until summer at the earliest, and it’s going to cost an absolute fortune.

Harmonix has made the ludicrous decision to up the retail price of the full package, that’s a copy of the game, a microphone, a guitar and drums, from the $169 it sold for in North America to £180. That’s the equivalent of $330, or double the price.

The company has spent the last few days trying to justify and explain the decision, but whatever excuses they may come out with, I just can’t see how such a differential in price can ever be justified.

For instance, Rob Kay, director of design at Harmonix said in an interview with Videogamer:

“It is more expensive, when you just straight to straight convert the prices you see on the website for the US version but there’s a myriad of these little differences that all add up. One thing is VAT, which is included in all the UK prices, 17.5%. There’s no tax included in the US price because tax is different per state. There’s a bunch of little reasons that add up to the price difference. We’re not trying to screw people.”

Fine, there’s a little more tax to take in to account, but 17.5% extra doesn’t account for a doubling in price.

After a few days of UK and European gamers basically expressing their opinion that this is shameful, the company has answered back with product development manager, Greg LoPiccolo posting a response on a gamers forum. He said:

“The game is not magically going to get cheaper because you wish it to be so”.

“We’re not making a killing on Rock Band in Europe. We are incredibly sensitive to pricing issues. We are painfully aware that the higher the price we charge, the less copies we’ll sell”.

“We are strongly motivated to keep the price as low as possible. That said, we don’t propose to lose money on it. The fact of the matter is, the costs of releasing in Europe are far higher than in the US, in some ways uniquely so for Rock Band compared to other game titles, because of the size of the peripherals.”

So basically he’s saying “Stop Moaning”. Well why don’t you stop ripping European gamers off? Then we wouldn’t have any reason to moan.

I’ll probably still buy Rock Band when it eventually comes out, as luckily I already have 2 guitars and some microphones from Guitar Hero and Singstar. All I need is the game and drums. Others however, may not be so lucky.