EA have finally announced and confirmed the price and release date for RockBand, the long awaited, much delayed, EA answer to the long standing and much beloved Guitar Hero. Rockband improves on the Guitar Hero franchise by including new instruments such as a drum kit and singer.

The price for the setup was always going to be higher than Guitar Hero's “one guitar for now to have some fun then buy a second next fortnight and then you're done” arrangement. But I think even the most pessimistic of EA haters is a little startled by the fistingly large price tag on Rock Band in Australia.

In the US the whole thing can be bought as a single package, giving you one guitar (you can buy a second one to add bass), a mic for the singer, and a drum kit, a piece of hardware that seems to be built to fail... kind of like me.. Anyway, bundled along with the game itself (pretty much a requirement) that pack comes to a grand total of $169.95USD. This is a pretty high price for any one game. But a...

EA have finally announced and confirmed the price and release date for RockBand, the long awaited, much delayed, EA answer to the long standing and much beloved Guitar Hero. Rockband improves on the Guitar Hero franchise by including new instruments such as a drum kit and singer.

The price for the setup was always going to be higher than Guitar Hero's “one guitar for now to have some fun then buy a second next fortnight and then you're done” arrangement. But I think even the most pessimistic of EA haters is a little startled by the fistingly large price tag on Rock Band in Australia.

In the US the whole thing can be bought as a single package, giving you one guitar (you can buy a second one to add bass), a mic for the singer, and a drum kit, a piece of hardware that seems to be built to fail... kind of like me.. Anyway, bundled along with the game itself (pretty much a requirement) that pack comes to a grand total of $169.95USD. This is a pretty high price for any one game. But actually pretty reasonable when you consider what you get for that. The exchange rate from the USD to the AUD is pretty strong at the moment, thanks to a strong aussie dollar against the greenback.

Am I the only one who giggles and thinks of Danger Mouse when listening to the financial report? Yes? Good to know.

Anyway, the AUD is strong and the USD is weak so the figure of $169.95USD translates directly into slightly less than $200 of our fine southern monies. “Not so!” cries EA.

In Australia the concept of “one bundle” is non-existent. The game is sold without additional hardware for the premium price of $120. This alone is remarkably high. While it's relatively common for a game to sell at that price (GTA4, for example) it's at best a high tide mark for a stand-alone game. When compared so something like Guitar Hero 3 without the guitars, or SingStar without the mics, it becomes a rather statlingly high price. And it only gets worse when you add in the hardware. A hardware bundle does exist, containing a guitar, mic, and drumkit, and it drops in at a staggering $300. A price that has left many Australian gaming journalists and gamers coughing and wheezing like an Olympic athlete in the clean Beijing air. This means that the combined cost to get your Rockband on is a pant-filling $420 AUD. That's to get the same product that sells in the US for the equivalent of less than $200.

It's pretty common for prices in the US to be not in any way indicative of prices in Australia. Historically, combining a weaker currency with a small and rather spread out population has meant Australian consumers pay a premium. I like to think of it as a small price to pay for not having the right to bear arms. Or possibly as a tax on understanding irony. I'm not sure. There are lots of good ways to think of it, but in general paying more for stuff is reasonably acceptable. We don't mind paying the exchange rate plus a small “arse end of the world” tax to cover our extra costs for shipping, smaller market, etc. We're pretty self-aware, and we get that.

But how big does that tax get to be? At what point does it just become gouging? At what point does it become an insult to consumers.

Congratulations, EA, for finding out.

Slugging Australians with a hefty 100% markup is unquestionably harsh, and seems to me rather indefensible, pushing them into a level of fucking over Australians normally reserved for British Generals in world wars. Or Sony.

They've tried to defend it, of course. You see, EA did the same thing in Europe, basically fucking the entire continent like they were the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler. The price in EU was only marginally less than here. Voices were raised in a chorus of whatever's European for “How the fuck do you assholes justify this?” and EA/Harmonix brought in their most mollifying people to mollify, calmly stating that the price was entirely reasonable. It was a response that seemed strangely like it wouldn't be accepted by the hordes of beret wearing gamers who had just been yelling about how unreasonable the price was. They also informed the fine citizenry of Europe that it's their own fault for living so far away from China, which increases the cost of shipping. I actually hadn't realised that the boat from China was that large a factor in the price of hardware, and I especially hadn't realised that the cost to ship something 5000km to Europe was so much more expensive than the cost to ship something 4500km to the US.

The thing that interests me the most about that particular argument is what happens now.

Australia has just had Rockband bestowed upon us by EA Australia, for a substantial increase over the European shafting. And yet we are substantially closer to China than the USA is. Shouldn't we logically then get a discount? But we're not, it's more here. Which means either that's not a factor in the case of Australia, or EA were simply lying. I hesitate to yell “pants on fire” in an industry and market I know very little about (international shipping, etc) but my bullshit detector is dinging like someone just nominated Linday Lohan for an Academy Award.