We prefer box copies cos that's what we've been sold our whole lives - to treasure these colorful trinkets that we purchase throughout our lives. It's just brain washing, and it'll subside, as it did with MP3s, as it is with movies. It'll be a painless transition. Think of all the shelving space we'll save. I suspect that people stick with Australian ecommerce sites because that's what we know. People assume that it's most appropriate to buy from companies that we know, that are within Australia. To think that we might be able to import games on an individual basis at a lower cost is quite absurd, but very much the reality. Another point that I think is worth looking at is that EB Games, and to a lesser extent GAME sell some Region 2 games - so they're importing them themselves. EB have the disgusting habit of not making it clear to customers that they're not buying Region 4 games.

That picture of the GAME store above is amazing and I'm sure it offers the consumer a great retail experience, but is it practical? How much are they spending on rent in order to allow a few kids to get excited for a few minutes. I can't see it lasting. I hope it does, but I don't see it. Sooner or later someone will enter the market by stacking the products high and keeping the costs down. Oh, they invented JB already. Personally I far prefer shopping at GAME than EB but for the fact that GAME generally only stock new release games, huge amounts of pre-owned games and only a handful of bargain priced games. Whereas EB really do have great stock, and during their sales they generally do have a wealth of bargain priced games. But the staff at GAME are actually pleasant and help where they can, in essence they're friendly. The staff at EB however is quite a different story. I've been treated with hostility in EB stores on a number of occassions, merely for trying to trade in games using their offers. If they pull me into the store with offers of $90 credit for a game that I've bought for $70, played and finished, is it really necessary to subject me to an interogation. Their whole attitude towards trading is wrong. If you don't want us to get great trade in deals, don't offer them. I'd like to see GAME expand their range of new games, specifically with budget and mid priced games, and for EB to wake up and start treating their customers with respect.

@gavin 78 Check PSN pricing. I'm pretty sure you'll find the prices of full retail games horrendous. Assassins Creed $49.95. GT Prologue $49.95. Rainbow Vegas 2 - $49.95. I haven't double checked these prices so there may be some inaccuracies but essentially the games are charged at the equivalent of full retail, when you can pick these titles up as a disk based game for approx half those prices, and below a third of those prices if you go the pre-owned or import route. Pre-owned is another factor of this discussion (which hasn't been discussed). I'd say that the pre-owned market supports high retail cost. $110 for a game isn't so bad if I'll be able to trade it in for $80 after completion. One notable expection to this is Fifa 10, which presumably due to the lack of continued multiplayer, fell hugely in value even before Fifa 11 was released. You can pick it up new for $20. Why is this? It can't be because it's an unpopular, or bad game, as it is clearly neither. I'm surprised that the games retailers haven't buckled under the pressure of lower cost games via ebay and importing, somehow they keep managing on selling games at increasingly higher prices. I only started buying from ebay a few weeks ago and i've already bought 30 titles. Someone stop me please. Blur for $15 - how can I resist.

Isn't 3 years on from August 2008, August 2011? Wouldn't that still be a point of time in the future? I'm pretty sure it would be. I'm no statistician, but i'd say that it would be a bit unfair, a knee jerk reaction perhaps, to claim that the trend is that the amount spent on games within Australia is falling when there have been significant increases in 3 of the last 4 years. Could there perhaps be any stats showing the amount of games purchased at full retail price, and those purchased at discounted rates. At the present moment in time it seems that the Australian retailers (EB, GAME, JB, BigW, K-Mart) are not having too many sales, and the number of games at bargain prices seem to be reducing. There's hardly any $20 games out there now, whereas a year ago there were plenty. I think one question to ask is how and why some retailers are able to sell highly anticipaed top titles at prices significantly lower than RRP - e.g. DSE selling Killzone 3, and Bulletstorm for $69.95. Perhaps "loss leader" is the simple answer, but I think that the whole question of pricing disparity within Australia should be looked at. Why is JB selling Wolfenstein for $108 when EB are selling it for $28. I feel sorry for the poor mum and dads that just get robbed blind due to a lack of savvyness. Freight is used as a reason - yet GAME and JB can afford to send items with free freight. How do they do this - GAME in particular. Selling a $4 item with free freight - nuts.

I don't get the last paragraph. It's a call for users to stop pirating because unless we do the games industry will collapse. Why should we care about the games industry collapsing? If users pirate games (for personal use), and give themselves the opportunity to play 100s'/1000s' of games that they otherwise wouldn't have (been able to) purchased, and in the process save themselves \$100s'/1,000s', 10,000s' and if some stage the gaming industry collapsed, how does this make the user a loser? They've allready won by accessing the games. If the Apocalypse is upon us then so be it. We'll migrate to PC gaming. We'll continue to play the existing games we have. And amongst all this scare-mongering there's no examples of anyone (within Australia) being prosecuted or jailed for piracy. Those that profit by selling pirated games, or illegal equipment, or upload games are in a different ballpark than those that simply pirate and play, at least in my opinion. With the recent iinet hoopla hasn't it been discussed that the appropriate authorities have publicly acknowledged that they have no interest in pursuing individual users that infringe copyrights, and that they're focus is only on those that profit from enabling piracy to occur, with ISPs' currently in the firing lines. Can you be fair on the many individual users that do pirate by letting us know the likelihood of being punished. With no examples it seems that the article is indeed weighted towards the interests of the gaming industry. In regards to Pirates feeling vindicated for various reasons, they are wrong. Piracy is wrong, and it is doing harm. But lots of things are wrong. Humans do wrong things. Why wouldn't we look after ourselves, we're only on the planet for a short time. And how much harm is it doing? As far as I know the gaming industry as a whole has had huge growth since it's mass market birth in the 80s'. Is it not now double the size of the movie industry in terms of $ revenues. And perhaps it the gaming industry can still be regarded as in it's infancy - it certainly has a lot more development to come. So all this scare-mongering is kind of hopeless. We all see Nintendo, Sony and MS as the corporate monoliths that they are. Also, in regards to this comment that I see alot:- "Most people who pirate games wouldn't of purchased them anyway = no loss." I would say that that could be clarified further. Most games would be purchased more if they were much lower prices. I wouldn't mind throwing a few dollars at a crap game just for a cheap thrill and for 30 minutes entertainment - but it just doesn't get offered to us. Pay a ludicrous amount or forget about it is the gaming industrys' pricing strategy. If they really are scared about the damaging effects of piracy, perhaps they would experiment more with pricing strategy. Which of course they won't, because they're not worried about the gaming industry collapsing. Whatever harm piracy does, no matter how big it can be calculated as being, the gaming companies that get it right are still raking in huge amounts of dough. And perhaps the PSP should have been mentioned in this article - being the only console that requires no modchipping to be able to play pirated games.

Interesting article, interesting answers. I have a question - where are the cheap games? When I was a young lad (in the UK) you could pay 10 or 20 quid for a new release, or if that was too much you'd have plenty of 2 quid budget games to choose from. You'd also be able to choose from a selection of compilations with anything from 10 to 20 1-2 year old games, and that would cost 10 or 20 quid or so. My point being that there doesn't seem many options available for the budget gamer. Even with the Sony Platinum Hits range, how long does it take to get the lower price - fricking ages - and even then it's not a huge discount from the newer games. PSP pricing seems excellent nowadays - pretty much everything $20, and the same with PS2. With prices like that I can't see a need for pirating (although having several games on a PSP memory stick would be nice). This whole trying to make pirates guilty because we're/they're stealing from the pockets of innocents balloney is never going to work, really because of the price gouging that they always have and always will engage in. DVD pricing provides an excellent example. Go into BigW/Kmart today and take your pick of movies that are 3 months or more from their initial release date and you'd do well to find many over $15. Alot of DVDs' that are 1 to 2 years old are $10 or less. So why has there been such a huge price drop (if you recall DVDs' used to be $25 at least even when an old release). Simply because people are downloading movies and will refuse to pay $20 or more - however $10 is considered great value and we'll purchase many of them to build a legitimate DVD collection. Games pricing should return to a more realistic level if they want to encourage piraters to think twice about their practices. Some games are worth the high price, but if you go out and buy 20 full priced games and put a severe dent in your pocket, how many will you really be happy with. How many will be utter junk, not as polished as it should be, or just not your cup of tea? Too many games are crap and like the article says most of have been burnt by burning bad media at a high cost to give a hoot about the welfare of "the industry".