I noticed a thing on the recent E3 live-stream which truly disturbed me:
Xbox One: 500$, 500 €.
What disturbes me on that, is that the exchange course of $/€ is not 1:1. The exchange course is currently 1,00 € = 1,3312 USD.
That means that europeans like me are actually paying 665 $ for our Xbox one. What the hell is that?
Your opinions, your explanations on that?
By the way, Sony does the same with their PS4, 400$/400€.
Import fees? The work and money it takes to sell a product to a foreign nation? The taxes that are imposed by said nation? I’m guessing it’s similar to why a Benz in Germany is cheaper than a Benz in the states.
Cuz 'MERICA iz numb3r One!!!11!1111!!
Everyone can’t pay the same price and at the same time bring profit to the company.
> Import fees? The work and money it takes to sell a product to a foreign nation? The taxes that are imposed by said nation? I’m guessing it’s similar to why a Benz in Germany is cheaper than a Benz in the states.
This fellow has it. Taxes are different, and you have to consider shipping, different advertising schemes to suit the different culture needs, as well as manufacturing and etc. It’s uncool you end up paying more when you convert to USD, but that’s just how it is. 
It was the same way with the 360, so I’m not sure why you’re complaining all of a sudden, but I would complain too.
> Import fees? The work and money it takes to sell a product to a foreign nation? The taxes that are imposed by said nation? I’m guessing it’s similar to why a Benz in Germany is cheaper than a Benz in the states.
Okay, I could understand that. But I’m sure I don’t have to pay 165$ just to import it from the US. And the taxes are not that high, at least not in all countries here. I just think it’s a bit too much.
> > Import fees? The work and money it takes to sell a product to a foreign nation? The taxes that are imposed by said nation? I’m guessing it’s similar to why a Benz in Germany is cheaper than a Benz in the states.
>
> This fellow has it. Taxes are different, and you have to consider shipping, different advertising schemes to suit the different culture needs, as well as manufacturing and etc. It’s uncool you end up paying more when you convert to USD, but that’s just how it is. <mark>It was the same way with the 360</mark>, so I’m not sure why you’re complaining all of a sudden, but I would complain too.
Yes, it was, but only a few bucks more. Not that much.
The UK price is the worst.
$500 is £320, WE’RE PAYING £429! That’s £5 more than the PS3 was! Whereas in America, the price is $100 cheaper than the PS3 was! This makes no sense, even with taxes, it shouldn’t be this high. The UK consumer is paying $170 more than the US consumer, as £429 = $670. Ridiculous, we essentially pay 33% more.
By the way, that’s a pound sign, it just looks very similar to the euro in this font layout.
> The UK price is the worst.
>
> $500 is £320, WE’RE PAYING £429! That’s £5 more than the PS3 was! Whereas in America, the price is $100 cheaper than the PS3 was! This makes no sense, even with taxes, it shouldn’t be this high. The UK consumer is paying $170 more than the US consumer, as £429 = $670. Ridiculous, we essentially pay 33% more.
>
> By the way, that’s a pound sign, it just looks very similar to the euro in this font layout.
That’s what I mean. Even with taxes and import costs (which are lower when you import big numbers of stuff) it is too high. You don’t pay that much, when you import something from Europe to the US. i can understand that it’s a bit cheaper in th US because that is where it comes from. But it is just too high.
But that why I want to hear your all opinions and explanations. Maybe there is something which explains the higher price. Maybe something between North America and Europe in general, something in the finances.
Who knows… but it’s still uncool.
Why do Europeans pay more?
I’m guessing because of increasing shipping costs, foreign taxes & tariffs, separate advertising campaigns, multilingual support, and an improved Kinect that might recognize some accents at least half the time.
Also since the TV options won’t be available to Europeans, Microsoft can’t sell your collected personal data for an additional revenue stream.
I mean taxes are effectively the highest cost when importing from the US as well as international trade tariffs but even so that cost for importing consoles will not equal to 100 GBP more especially when bigger companies are better at dodging taxes and costs especially with their economies of scale, and I would’ve thought that due to Microsoft being one of the biggest companies in the world that they would’ve made prices fairer to people worldwide and not just charge lower prices I the US especially where that is where they get the majority of their sales.
Although I am a huge fan of the 360 and it’s exclusives the price in the UK is really putting me off when the PS4 is 80 GBP cheaper. Also US owners get more from the Xbox one than European owners with US specific features such as the apps like hulu plus and all of the focus on US favored sports which are generally not applied in Europe and we don’t get as many apps as the US.
this isnt import or tax thing.
no matter what exchange rate the banks set for euros and dollars, they are ultimately a commodity to be exchanged however third parties desire. in the case of the euro being a commodity, ms and sony value it the same as a us dollar.
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> It’s AU$600 in Australia. That’s US$566 (that’s ‘after’ the massive market change, suddenly making our currency weaker than the US’s).
WOW and Australia are renowned for getting the worst prices along with New Zealand. Yet the UK price is the equivalent of $670, it’s £429!
I know things are bad when our price is $100 worse off than Australia. Regardless of imports, tariffs or how these corporations have valued the currencies, this isn’t reflective of their true market value and is simply too much. UK consumers (and other regions, but not to the same extent) are getting really screwed over on the pricing.
Let’s just put it in business context.
Microsoft are a huge company therefore they benefit from good economies of scale which means they can sell and distribute in bulk for cheaper, minimizing costs.
Once the Products have been exported to one EU country the Products can then be distributed among EU countries for free due to EU free trade tariffs.
So from what I can see Microsoft are just being their greedy usual selves and will make $170 extra for each console sold in the UK, so if 1,000,000 consoles are sold in the UK, Microsoft will make $170,000,000 extra on those UK sales.
I can understand if I have confused anyone or if I have made any stupid errors, but I know that the trading stuff is true.
^Not exactly
Basic business practices/ logic. It all has to do with “COST OF LIVING.” Business’s still have to pay there employees/ taxes/ utilities/ etc., so they need to make a profit off of the Xboxes that they sell. But in Europe, employees will get paid in Euros, so that business needs to make more profit to offset that cost. If they sold it at the US price, that store wouldn’t see much profit, if any at all.
Just in cased you’re confused, here’s a scenario everybody can understand: It’s the same reason America’s Mcdonald’s 1 dollar items are 1 Euro over there. Or our 1 dollar coke is a 1 Euro in Europe. You will see this on almost all merchandise that is sold throughout various parts of the world.
> > It’s AU$600 in Australia. That’s US$566 (that’s ‘after’ the massive market change, suddenly making our currency weaker than the US’s).
>
> WOW and Australia are renowned for getting the worst prices along with New Zealand. Yet the UK price is the equivalent of $670, it’s £429!
>
> I know things are bad when our price is $100 worse off than Australia. Regardless of imports, tariffs or how these corporations have valued the currencies, this isn’t reflective of their true market value and is simply too much. UK consumers (and other regions, but not to the same extent) are getting really screwed over on the pricing.
I paid around $900 AU for the 360 when it came out so I’m not worried about the $600 AU for the new console. That’s pretty good. I live in Queensland Australia and it’s one of the cheapest states to live in AU now. Thankfully because the cost of living was getting too high here.
double post
> ^Not exactly
> Basic business practices/ logic. It all has to do with “COST OF LIVING.” Business’s still have to pay there employees/ taxes/ utilities/ etc., so they need to make a profit off of the Xboxes that they sell. But in Europe, employees will get paid in Euros, so that business needs to make more profit to offset that cost. If they sold it at the US price, that store wouldn’t see much profit, if any at all.
>
>
> Just in cased you’re confused, here’s a scenario everybody can understand: It’s the same reason America’s Mcdonald’s 1 dollar items are 1 Euro over there. Or our 1 dollar coke is a 1 Euro in Europe. You will see this on almost all merchandise that is sold throughout various parts of the world.
Yes but Microsoft will be setting a profitable price in the US otherwise that would be bad business practice and they wouldn’t be making much of a profit on their biggest customer base, and yes Microsoft will still have to pay taxes and wages but 100 GBP extra on each console is way too much and they would make a sustainable revenue and profit from a lower profit especially when Microsoft will have lower costs due to the size of the company than many would expect. From this view I think that xbox one will have suffer from low demand in the uk and high supply which means that they could generate lower revenue unless they manage to reach an equilibrium between the two at the higher price.
Sony are doing the same thing its just that the difference seems a big difference between the two consoles at an 80 GBP difference and then we have to pay for xbox live and games to play, and then there are other disadvantages to the xbox which people do not like such as the used games market, trading, Kinect always having to be plugged in and the xbox needing to be connected to the internet. Yes Microsoft are putting more money into exclusives but they will receive that money back in profits from the games anyway and it doesn’t seem like they have focused as much on the little things as sony has such as the ability to play games from previous generations.
Another reason why I won’t be purchasing the Xbox One upon launch. I’m going to be waiting for some news on this new Halo game to see if it’s going to be worthwhile. I made the same mistake last time and it cost me a fortune.
Won’t be doing that again.