Advance Australia Unfair
And so we come to the post where I rant about Australia’s videogame industry, and in particular, Nintendo Australia Ltd.
First, let’s get the facts down:
Excite Truck
- released 19/11/06 in America
- released 22/02/07 in Australia
- delay of 95 days
The Legend of Zelda
- released 19/11/06 in America
- released 07/12/06 in Australia
- delay of 18 days
Wii Sports
- released 19/11/06 in America
- released 07/12/06 in Australia
- delay of 18 days
WarioWare
- released 15/01/07 in America
- released 25/01/07 in Australia
- delay of 10 days
Wii Play
- released 12/02/07 in America
- released 07/12/06 in Australia
- arrived 67 days early
Super Paper Mario
- released 09/04/07 in America
- released 20/09/07 in Australia
- delay of 164 days
Mario Party 8
- released 29/05/07 in America
- released 19/07/07 in Australia
- delay of 51 days
Big Brain Academy
- released 11/06/07 in America
- released 08/11/07 in Australia
- delay of 150 days
Pokémon Battle Revolution
- released 25/06/07 in America
- released 22/11/07 in Australia
- delay of 150 days
Mario Strikers
- released 30/07/07 in America
- released 07/06/07 in Australia
- arrived 53 days early
Metroid Prime 3
- released 27/08/07 in America
- released 08/11/07 in Australia
- delay of 73 days
Donkey Kong Barrel Blast
- released 08/10/07 in America
- released 07/02/08 in Australia
- delay of 122 days
Battalion Wars 2
- released 29/10/07 in America
- released 20/03/08 in Australia
- delay of 143 days
Fire Emblem
- released 05/11/07 in America
- released 10/04/08 in Australia
- delay of 157 days
Super Mario Galaxy
- released 12/11/07 in America
- released 29/11/07 in Australia
- delay of 17 days
Link’s Crossbow Training
- released 19/11/07 in America
- released 13/12/07 in Australia
- delay of 24 days
Endless Ocean
- released 21/01/08 in America
- released 17/01/08 in Australia
- arrived 4 days early
Super Smash Bros. Brawl*
- released 09/03/08 in America
- released 01/05/08 in Australia
- delay of 53 days
Average delay is 62.28 days
So, what does that wall of numbers and dates mean? Well, it sums up the release dates of first-party Wii titles in Australia and America, and provides the number of days it was delayed by (or arrived early by). Note that Super Smash Bros. Brawl does not currently have a release date for Australia, and it currently has the earliest plausible release date, 1st of May. This is based on the idea that Brawl will release somewhere between May and June, according to Aussie, creator of Aussie-Nintendo.com. If Brawl releases later than 1st of May, the average delay will be higher.
As you can see above, the average delay is just over 62 days. To put this into perspective, this is more than two months of delay, on average, for a first-party Wii game to reach Australia from America. On a side note, the average delay from Europe to Australia is 19.13 days, or just under 3 weeks… although this is inflated by the delays seen for Big Brain Academy (111 days) and Endless Ocean (69 days).
Nintendo Australia’s standard line is that these delays are due to localisation and PAL conversion… however, this is inconsistent with the aforementioned huge delays to Big Brain Academy and Endless Ocean. Both games took over two months to reach Australia after being released in Europe; all the while, Europe requires more localisation (indeed, Australia barely needs any at all), and Europe also has PAL. Therefore, there is little doubt that the delay is purely because of Nintendo Australia’s ineptitude.
Some would be tempted to point out that there are also marketing issues, and Nintendo Australia would want to time releases to maximise sales. This argument, however, falls apart when one observes that not a single first-party game was released in Australia between the months of March and May – indeed, there was a three and a half month period without even one first-party game. And then, in the following three months, only two games were released. Nintendo of Europe at least managed three game releases within that six month period (one of which was Big Brain Academy).
Meanwhile, during the christmas sales period of November and December, Nintendo Australia released five games. This is not a reasonable number for Nintendo to release, given that it is the period in which third parties also put out a lot of games, and it is counterproductive to release five games within just over a month, even during the Christmas shopping season. This is especially true when you consider that not a single game was released in the month preceding it.
As a result of Nintendo Australia’s bungling of the 2007 release schedule, there was insufficient room to also release Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, Battalion Wars II, Donkey Kong Jet Race, or Endless Ocean within 2007, when three of those games were released in America, and one in Europe, within 2007. However, rather than getting these games out early, and pushing to get 2008’s games at reasonable times, Nintendo Australia are stretching out the releases of these games, and delaying other games even further. It is also worth noting that Wii Chess, which is already out in Europe, does not even appear to be planned for an Australian release.
Of course, the excessive delays that Australians must endure would perhaps be tolerable, if it weren’t for the dramatic markup that we experience with our games. A game that is released for US$50 is often priced at AU$100. At this point in time, factoring in both exchange rate and GST, a product costing US$50 should only cost AU$61. It would be understandable for a shipping cost to be added, as Australia is relatively sparse and anything imported must travel a fair distance… but this would justify perhaps an increase to AU$70… AU$75, perhaps, if you want to leave room for varying exchange rates.
And to make matters worse, sometimes we get an even worse deal; sometimes, games will only be US$40, and still be AU$100, which indicates a more than 100% markup. At least some publishers are starting to adjust; for instance, Nitro Bike, which was released at US$50, was released in Australia for just AU$50, meaning that it is cheaper than its American counterpart… and in the process, we had to wait just a few weeks, which is acceptable.
And in paying these incredibly inflated prices, we don’t even get the perks that other regions get – we don’t have a well-maintained website, we don’t have any sort of special membership deal… indeed, sometimes we don’t even get full versions of the games. Other games don’t even make it over here at all, in spite of being published in Europe. Europe, America, Japan, they all have some sort of deal where you get some sort of reward from buying games. Australia gets nothing.
Perhaps if Nintendo Australia cared enough about their customers to provide an email address for contacting them, these issues would not have arisen – at the very least, it would allow Australians to let out their frustrations. However, Nintendo Australia can only be contacted by physical mail or by telephone; and contacting by telephone is useless, since their phone operators aren’t even sufficiently informed to know what games are releasing, let alone details like when, what features, issues, etc. Contacting by mail, of course, is both inefficient and ineffective, not to mention time-consuming.
Of course, Nintendo Australia could have organised for Nintendo of America to handle email contact… but if we email Nintendo of America, they simply reply with a canned message saying that they cannot comment on other regions, even if you request that they forward it to Nintendo Australia. As a result, Australians are not only ripped off and delayed until they start to wither, we are unable to release their frustration in any significant manner.
All of this would be acceptable, if we were not burdened by region locking. The majority of Australia TVs by far are capable of displaying NTSC images without a problem – fewer TVs still have composite TV input while being unable to show NTSC – and the Wii outputs in composite or component, not the older RF format. And region locking is technically illegal in Australia… which is bizarre, given that the legislation seems not to cover gaming consoles, and as a result the PS3 and the 360 are both region-locked for DVDs.
And so, there are many solutions to the current problem, but they all revolve around Nintendo Australia actually doing something for their customers, rather than what they think is the more profitable route. In the end, they just continue to hurt their customers, which drives down interest, which leads to lower profits for them – but Nintendo Australia are so inept, they think they’re doing their parent company a favour.
It is no accident that the GameCube sold only 180,000 units in Australia in its lifetime, compared to closer to 800,000 units for the Xbox. Had Nintendo actually taken care of their customers, the GameCube would have performed as well in Australia as it did elsewhere. Now, the Wii is selling much better, but this is solely due to the fact that the system is too good for Nintendo Australia to completely ruin its sales. That being said, we still see far lower sales rates in Australia than elsewhere; Britain, with three times the population, has more than seven times the sales rate that Australia has, for Wii. It certainly cannot be explained by culture, as Australian culture is even more hardcore than Britain.
No doubt Nintendo Australia would claim that it’s merely because of supply issues, but the DS tells a different tale – it also has a sales rate in Britain 5 times as great as seen in Australia, which is significantly more than the population difference. The difference between the two is that Britain tends to get the games a bit earlier, and they have their special membership deals.
And their prices, when you remove their sales tax, are actually lower than seen in Australia. The Wii costs £179.99, which, after removing their 17.5% sales tax, and converting to Australian dollars, is AU$334… adding GST, that’s equivalent to AU$367 – significantly less than the AU$400 that we have to pay. Super Paper Mario costs the equivalent of AU$82 (it’s AU$100, here), and Metroid Prime 3 costs the equivalent of AU$71 (it’s also AU$100, here). Endless Ocean, which cost the equivalent of AU$41 in Britain, cost AU$80, here.
Fact is, Australians are getting ripped off, big-time, and to make things worse, we have to put up with huge delays, with no bonuses at the end of it all.
And to top it all off, it appears that EA has decided that Australia doesn’t even deserve online in Medal of Honor: Heroes 2… we’re hoping that it turns out that it was merely a mistake, or something, but the evidence suggests otherwise.
Oh, and expect another post soon about what we should do about it…
Tags: Delays, Nintendo Australia, Ripoffs, Video Game Prices
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