{"id":93583,"date":"2016-06-01T17:56:25","date_gmt":"2016-06-01T15:56:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=93583"},"modified":"2016-06-05T14:03:40","modified_gmt":"2016-06-05T12:03:40","slug":"south-africas-crazy-video-game-prices-2003-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/pc\/93583-south-africas-crazy-video-game-prices-2003-2016","title":{"rendered":"South Africa\u2019s crazy video game prices: 2003\u20132016"},"content":{"rendered":"

When news broke last year that Microsoft would be selling Quantum Break in South Africa for almost R1,200<\/strong>, it raised concerns that this signalled a general price increase on games.<\/p>\n

Fears that the price of games would skyrocket have been realised<\/strong><\/a>, with big new PC<\/strong> releases selling for between R600<\/strong> and R1,000<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

New PlayStation 4<\/strong> and Xbox One<\/strong> titles sell for between R800<\/strong> and R1,100<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Although most games have not reached the high price of Quantum Break, the pre-order prices<\/strong><\/a> for Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare are worryingly high.<\/p>\n

To see whether the sudden increase in the price of games in South Africa is reasonable, we wanted to compare them to the exchange rate and inflation.<\/p>\n

However, even among big-name titles\u00a0which\u00a0release\u00a0in the same month, prices now vary wildly.<\/p>\n

Call of Duty prices vs. Inflation<\/h3>\n

For a fair comparison, we would need a game series that is published and distributed by the same companies on a regular schedule \u2014\u00a0like Call of Duty.<\/p>\n

Activision has released a Call of Duty sequel in November every year like clockwork since 2006, making it an excellent candidate for such a comparison.<\/p>\n

The graph below shows how the PC and console prices of Call of Duty games have changed compared to inflation.<\/p>\n

\"Call<\/a>

Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

ZAR-USD exchange rate: October 2003 to June 2016<\/h3>\n

The graph above shows that between 2010 and 2014, the price of a new Call of Duty game actually tracked below inflation for awhile.<\/p>\n

As the rand steadily weakened, and then suddenly dropped to new lows last year, the price of new games also spiked.<\/p>\n

This means that even if your salary increased at the same rate as inflation every year, you are still paying relatively more for a new game than you were before.<\/p>\n

\"ZAR-USD<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

More on the price of games in South Africa<\/h3>\n

Are expensive console subscriptions worth it in South Africa?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Game prices in South Africa: PC vs PlayStation 4 vs Xbox One<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

This is how crazy the prices of games are in South Africa<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The price of new video games and pre-orders have skyrocketed in South Africa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":163,"featured_media":85841,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11681,4],"tags":[587,23,91,10068],"class_list":["post-93583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pc","category-playstation","category-xbox","tag-activision","tag-call-of-duty","tag-microsoft","tag-quantum-break"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/163"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93583"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93593,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93583\/revisions\/93593"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}