Are Retail Games Priced Unfairly In Malaysia? - Publishers Do Take Note

Pricing has always been the eternal question in Malaysia and around our region. Well, at least for video games(PC or console games for that matter). It is one that has divided so many gamers into those that buy original and to those that continue to buy pirated game(or instead drop into the slew of free to play games available now). Although it can be argued that even pirates(you have to be fair here) could afford original game, just not that too often. This isn't the main reason for piracy, just one that is often quoted. At least in Malaysia.

And this is a common argument amongst fellow Malaysians, and  one that I'm finding myself starting to fall into recently. Fact is, our purchasing power is just not equal to Singaporeans. Publisher often lump us Malaysians together with Singaporeans which often means we're getting local retail copies of games adjusted to the Singaporean cost of living. The Thais get further price drops, but we Malaysians get a minor discount, when you think about it, the cost of living and purchasing power parity of Malaysians with Singaporeans is just not the same or even fairly similar.

This dissonance(between purchasing power parity and price points) has been bothering me quite a bit. Don't get me wrong, I still purchase all my games and would never consider pirating any game. But don't publishers have a responsibility to be fair to regions they are marketing their games too? Shouldn't publishers be looking at Malaysia separately from Singapore and treat Malaysian consumers fairly, giving us a fairer localised pricing? It may be a logistical convenience to lump us together with Singapore, but is it fair?

Looking back at previous attempts at localised pricing, I remember a couple of years back, Supreme Commander had a localised version that was sold at retail for RM80. Taking into account EA, Activision(but not Blizzard games since that is a special circumstance that requires a separate retort of sorts) and Ubisoft game pricing here, most games retail at average RM170. The increased cost of everything basically has affected pricing a little here, EA games now average at RM159(when they used to go as low as RM139, which is now only available to their less 'bigger' titles).

Going back to the localised Supreme Commander case, it was reported that the publisher complained that the drop in price didn't see a double in sales... in essence, it wasn't worth it for them to drop it's price to RM80. It did not pay off in the end. This lead to a general discouraging effect that no publisher would ever consider putting out a localised copy cause it would not mean a double in sales.

Oh and don't even get me started on Blizzard and their distributors, IAH Games in Malaysia. A so called localised copy that meant we had to pay even more than the rest of the world for StarCraft II. Where's the logic in that?

My question to you all is this, will you support a publisher if they dropped the retail price of their game below RM100? Would you buy more games if they did drop the price below RM100?