Australian BF3 Players Vent Rage Over BF3 Premium Pricing Disparity

[News Portal]

A fifty-four page thread on the official Battlefield forums is filled with apoplectic fury from console players of Battlefield 3, who have noticed that they are being charged AUD $80 for the newly-announced BF3 Premium service while PC players are only being slugged $50. EA's Jiggsy is on the case, but players are yet to receive an official response as to the pricing bump, which has left many loudly considering a claim to the ACCC.

Source: Battlelog (Thanks to James Baylis for sending this in!)

Read full article by GON News

[Brunius]

Wait, so the console players are annoyed that they're getting charged more than the PC players for once? I don't see all the PC players up in arms about every new game that costs more on PC.

[Pengz]

its actually quite rare to find a pc game nowadays that costs more than a console game.

I thought the outcry would be more about having to pay for a premium service rather than the price. But to each their own.

[Jez]

Damn the guy making that post is barely literate, kind of plays into the stereotype....

[phx]

Damn straight! Merchants shouldn't be able to charge different amounts for different things! The government should abolish this unfair system and take control of all the resources for the hard working citizens.

The People's Battlefield 4 will be glorious, with shinier graphics, and there will not be people who will gain advantage from premium weapons, because there will be no fighting and no war as the People's Australian Democratic Republic of Phxistan has no enemies, and never will!

[Instinx]

You guys really need to re-look at the premium service. First off, you don't have to buy it, and it gives you no unfair advantage over anyone else; just camo and early access. Its basically all the DLC for half the price (On PC at least ), paid in advance, with some extra stuff thrown in.

[Submariner]

That thread got locked because "it had done its job." Another thread was started:
http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/fo ... 6859172/2/
They are going to have to keep locking threads if they want to hide the price difference. This seems to be their policy, hide and ignore.

http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Bus ... /index.htm

[Ralph Wiggum]

Oh please, PC games have been cheaper than console games for quite a while now. This is no different.

[Sathias]

That reminds me, I better buy it on PC before they decide to hike the price

[spkypwnsuall]

You guys really need to re-look at the premium service. First off, you don't have to buy it, and it gives you no unfair advantage over anyone else; just camo and early access. Its basically all the DLC for half the price (On PC at least ), paid in advance, with some extra stuff thrown in.

I'll just pretend that the queue priority isn't unfair or anything to those who wait to enter servers, especially seeing as its $50 ON TOP OF the base game. As for the guns, well, I can't really say if they are better than any of the other guns (as i'm not a premium member), but I'm sure there are a few more weapons significantly better than the rest.

Regards the issue, its interesting to see console gamers complain about this sort of thing, when its been happening for years. In the case of pre-orders, $90 on PC = $110 on Xbox.
Odd system....

[Lord_Apophis]

The ACCC is already looking into Price gauging that game companies do in Australia anyway, so they should all take it to the ACCC in the hopes we can all get lower pricing, which is fantastic for us.

[Deserteagle1266]

prettys stupid, but no gun is the best. i can rank top player using any gun.. could do the same in cod

[PalZer0]

I have no insight into PSN pricing but on XBL it's 4000 MSP globally so there's no gouging going on in the classic sense (certain regions being charged more MSP than other regions).

The problem people are having is that 4000 MSP costs more here than in the US. However, that's all on MS and has nothing to do with EA.

[Instinx]

You guys really need to re-look at the premium service. First off, you don't have to buy it, and it gives you no unfair advantage over anyone else; just camo and early access. Its basically all the DLC for half the price (On PC at least ), paid in advance, with some extra stuff thrown in.

I'll just pretend that the queue priority isn't unfair or anything to those who wait to enter servers, especially seeing as its $50 ON TOP OF the base game. As for the guns, well, I can't really say if they are better than any of the other guns (as i'm not a premium member), but I'm sure there are a few more weapons significantly better than the rest.

Regards the issue, its interesting to see console gamers complain about this sort of thing, when its been happening for years. In the case of pre-orders, $90 on PC = $110 on Xbox.
Odd system....

There are no exclusive weapons! They are just the new Close Quarters weapons.

[BuZeR]

How much does this cost for consoles in the US? I would hazard a guess it is 50USD…

Typically the prices for PCs are lower because we just buy ones from the states, or digital from a different country, so we have forced their hand to give us competitive prices. But the 100% luxury goods markup that has been stuck on Australians import market has been more evident for consoles as they have little choice but to shop at home. People never used to care that we paid twice as much as the states, because our dollar was 0.58c to their dollar. Now we are hovering around parity with the states, people expect it to be reflected in the prices we pay... And quite rightly to i may add.

It has recently been a more common place for globally competitive prices in the PC market; this is due to local retail market making noise due to a slump in PC sales, and helped by the fact that PC gamers have been aware of this disparity and very vocal on the topic for few years now.

But that being said, places like Steam and other digital disputers do still charge 20%-100% more for games if you are on the Australian service (ref: http://www.steamprices.com/au/topripoffs), though it has to be mentioned; this is from the game companies setting the RRP by region, not Steam and other distributors price gouging. As far as I know, they base this RRP pretty much by how much they think they can sell it for. Nothing to do with any global price reflected in exchange rates at the time – this would be the fair method.

So unfortunatly, the only thing that we can do to change this is not buy in Australia. But the down side to this is more game shops, such as Game, will close due to lack of sales/profit. But they have no one but themselves to blame, there are grey import shops (ozgameshop.com comes to mind) that offer a way around these Australian RRP presets... In the world of IT you have change with the times.

Edit: Just for those interested.. Current prices on steamprices.com reflect the following for PC:

Call of Duty: MW2

Aus: $ 89.99
USA: $ 19.99 (-77.79%)


Medal of Honor™

AUS: $ 69.99
USA: $ 19.99 (-71.44%)