Brazil is one core member of the BRIC group which is the group of developing countries who the first world are most afraid of losing their comfortable economies to.
But while we may not be part of BRIC we are at least miles ahead when it comes to gaming and being up to date with the rest of the gaming world, Brazil has only recently had an official PS2 launch and now the PS3 has finally landed on their shores.
To mark this moment I would like to say
Oh homem que sucções a você
Which translated back to English means
Oh man it sucks to be you*
This is because the RRP for a PS3 in Brazil is R8 226 which is pretty abysmal and there really is no excuse for ripping a country off that badly.
I don’t know why Sony has taken so long to launch in one of the bigger countries in the world but I would guess that now that they are in country the price will start to slowly correct itself over the coming years.
*translation is most probably wrong because I used a free English to Portuguese translator.. you get the idea though
Last Updated: August 12, 2010
darthdad
August 12, 2010 at 06:58
How much does the Xbox360 cost in Brazil?
I can’t see Sony getting any kind of foothold with that price.
Gavin Mannion
August 12, 2010 at 07:06
No idea, they charged $1400 when it was released in 2006.. again a stupidly high amount of money
riezo
August 12, 2010 at 07:23
Shame, I plan on going there in 4 years, guess I wont be scoring any bargain basement deals lol.
I wonder how much games cost?
bokka1
August 12, 2010 at 10:30
Maybe you will be able to take a few consoles and swap it for soccer tickets.
Bobby Kotick weighs in
August 12, 2010 at 11:38
One of the reasons, software piracy is such a huge problem in Brazil (same can be said for India and Russia). It doesn’t seem like Microshaft and Sony are actually serious about their markets in the developing world (how long did it take for microass to decide on local Live for us, Saffers?). My guess would be because of lingering perceptions about South America and Africa as “3rd world”.
However, developing countries like Brazil and South Africa are rapidly growing their middle class (which is actually expanding faster amongst the BRICs -incidentally these countries are some of the most populous in the world) and that’s really your future market for games. If MS and Sony thought about this as a typical South African businessman would, they would aggressively push for marketshare in these territories, and go on an aggressive marketing campaign, because invariably that snotty-nosed black kid could potentially become a middle class slob with kids, house, disposable income etc. in the next 10 years (and you don’t want him to be buying Chinese knockoffs when the Chinese finally expand their market to games).
Europe, North America and Japan are stable. There won’t be any growth in those territories, especially not in Europe and Japan given their ever rapidly ageing populations.
The other side to all of this is, could be tax-related, because there are countries in the world that levies a luxury goods tax on electronics which might sky rocket the price? But I doubt that’s the case here. Anyway, I hope someone could get a bit more info on this.
Ricardo
August 12, 2010 at 11:45
LOL the translation, doesnt make sense at all, good try though!
Christo Le Grange
August 12, 2010 at 12:42
interesting points you making, which i agree with.
If sony and MS moan about sales and declining thereof, why don’t start by giving the consoles away even…or very low entry cost.
if they really want to take over the world, and if they care about a foothold on any of the other BRIC countries, then they should start focusing on them, and with it the titles on the respective platforms would sell more and ‘hopefully’ the publishers will get off our backs with threats of MP pricing and crap like that.
Bobby K is an African gamer
August 12, 2010 at 13:26
Exactly Christo, everyone knows that emerging markets are where the future is at, and on this issue the Games Industry is severely lagging behind. In terms of short term profits capitalizing on MP sounds like a smart move, but ultimately you’re effectively cutting off a prospective and lucrative market, not to mention running the risk of diminishing your clientèle (instead of the “hope” of maintaining a stable cash flow through subscriptions, but I guess Activision is going to learn this the hard way).
PS: Just found this hilarious nugget on Kotaku from a user called royepm65
“08/11/10
I did a quick search and this is what I found:
Ticket Sao Paulo/Miami/Sao Paulo = US$827 (Lan airlines)
PS3 = US$299
Total = US$1126
And you get to enjoy Miami for 3 days with that.” 😆
Daniel Silveira
August 12, 2010 at 13:36
LOL. The translation does not make any sense. But it is really funny!
Trying to re-translate to english it says something like.
“Hey Man! What a set of vacuums to you!”
Bobby K does the Math
August 12, 2010 at 13:58
Turns out it is tax and import fee related, rather than Sony being greedy. There is a 60% import fee for all electronics called the Federal Import Fee (II, Imposto de Importação), which is applied over the full value of the product. Then, the state value added tax (ICMS, Imposto sobre Circulação de Mercadorias e Serviços) is applied, which comes in at about 18% of the total value of the item (but it varies per federal state).
In other words, a $300 120Gb PS3 would be roughly 550BRL (Brazillian Rua), but once you apply the taxes…
Original price: 550 BRL
After II: 550 x 1.6 = 880,00 BRL
After ICMS: 880 x 1.18 = 1038.40 BRL
Let’s be glad our import taxes aren’t that insane… 😆 :pinch: :pouty: :sideways:
Bobby K does the Math
August 12, 2010 at 14:04
Turns out it is tax and import fee related, rather than Sony being greedy. There is a 60% import fee for all electronics called the Federal Import Fee (II, Imposto de Importação), which is applied over the full value of the product. Then, the state value added tax (ICMS, Imposto sobre Circulação de Mercadorias e Serviços) is applied, which comes in at about 18% of the total value of the item (but it varies per federal state).
In other words, a $300 120Gb PS3 would be roughly 550BRL (Brazillian Rua), but once you apply the taxes…
Original price: 550 BRL
After II: 550 x 1.6 = 880,00 BRL
After ICMS: 880 x 1.18 = 1038.40 BRL
Let’s be glad our import taxes aren’t that insane…
Christo Le Grange
August 12, 2010 at 14:13
all of a sudden i’m glad we’re in SA! (and thats not South America)
Filipe
August 12, 2010 at 15:53
LOL! Bad translation, never trust blindly in free translators, even Google. But I’ll try to help. The better translation would be “Oh, cara, eu odiaria ser você!”
Bobby K is right about the taxes, but the case is different. We are not talking about importing one PS3. We’re talking about a console produced here (adapted to the brazilian market, with DVD region 4 instead of the Region 1 that comes in the most of the imported PS3). Anyway, while Sony tries to rape the brazilian gamers with a PS3 priced over 1000,00 USD, we can buy the imported PS3 for even less than half of that price. I think Sony will have some tons of PS3 stucked in stores…
Ricardo
August 12, 2010 at 20:07
Filipe, você é brasileiro?
Gavin Mannion
August 12, 2010 at 23:22
Yeah I didn’t expect the translation to work but we tried 🙂
As for the console it’s not like they need to do major changes to implement a region 4 console as there are a lot of countries using Region 4 already and there is no reason they couldn’t just ship some over from Oz or some other region 4 console and sell them for a reasonable price.