Does anyone live in a country difficult for gaming? (3rd world, africa, etc)

I think I can count I live in Ukraine, a post-soviet country.
All gaming in 80s and early 90s was represented by ZX Spectrum clones and its huge library of games on cassettes and floppys. Then I remember there appeared numerous NES/Famicom clones. NES wasn't sold officially here and in Russia as well, so no one had seen a licenced game or a console here back in the day. Almost all the cartridges contained more than 1 game and there were MANY hacked versions of games. Some games had text in Japanese, though it wasn't a Japanese exclusive. That's maybe because most of cartridges came to us from East Asia.
Super Nintendo was sold officially by Nintendo. The price was relentlessly high, so it remained rather obscure. Instead we had Sega Genesis. It seemed to be official, not cloned and the games were "1 game per cart" - licenced I suppose. Sega was quite affordable and many of us remember having it in possession. Sega Genesis and its games are sold even now.
Nintendo 64 is almost not known. I suppose carts are much harder to clone than CDs for Playstation 1. So, people here divided in two groups: PC gamers (which could afford PC) and PS1 gamers (which had no PC at home).
But today ALL the gaming is mostly PC gaming - probably because of piracy: very few people can afford a PS3 game for $50, but licenced games began to sell here.
I personally don't care about Xbox360 and PS3 because I prefer Wii. Though it's REALLY hard to get a Wii game here, even a pirated copy, but almost all Wiis are already sold premodded. Wii is also not sold officially here.
But now the situation comes the right way: you can easily get information about newest consoles, you can get a licenced copy. You can even get a copy with official Russian translation (though there are still a lot of homebrew translations for PC games). And of course there is eBay.
That's the situation here in brief. Feel free to ask questions =)

 

Well here in Uruguay it is not hard to find games but to afford them.

Nintendo, SEGA and Sony stuff was always officially sold here, but at very expensive prices, always sold for twice or thrice the US retail prices.

To give you an idea, a brand new DS game sells for USD 150. A Wii for USD 450 in most places. Wii/PS3/XBOX360 games for USD 180.

It is hard to find anything not Nintendo or Sony, even the SEGA Saturn was quite uncommon at the time, and it is considered a rarity now down here.

XBOX never sold officially, but 360 does now.

So it is very difficult to afford gaming in this country, and also importing is quite hard, as there is a mandatory 60% tax (applied on the price of the items + shipping) on internet purchases, and if your purchase exceeds the USD 100 limit, you need to hire a customs broker to get it out (whose minimum duty costs USD 100 as well). So it is very tricky to import stuff, I've been very lucky all these past years and just 4 or 5 times got stuff stuck at customs. But most of my collection comes from stuff I bring back with me from trips to the US.

Oh and needless to say piracy rules the streets here since famicom ages. Most people find their way around by buying pirate games.

In terms of PC gaming, the same prices apply though not many places sell original PC games. Steam has offered a means for those who want to stay legal and buy legitimate PC software here in Uruguay.

 

That's just ridiculous, why would you have to do that? How are they justifying this chicanery? Aren't the 60% of taxes () already enough?

 

Well they say it is to protect the national industry/production, to force people to buy stuff "made here" which is bulls**t as there is no videogame/PC/electronics national production in Uruguay.

The videogame industry here is very small and consists 99% on crappy flash advergaming for export, the other 1% is Android/iOS advergaming as well.

:dammit:

 

everytime I go to the mall I get enraged by how high the prices are down here.

And I literally mean that I would like to BURN THE WHOLE PLACE DOWN!!!

The next time I have to go to customs to get something I bought, I promise I will make a video and post it somewhere so people can see how HORRIBLE this is,

Uruguay SUCKS!

Fuck, I really want to leave

 

I love the fact that you used the word CHICANERY.

And your answer is that they DONT JUSTIFY SHIT.
The national production argument is invalid for the tech industry as Tchoin said.
Plus, the uruguayan state steals from is citizens tons of money in the form of taxes.
Value added tax is of 22 % for almost every product of our daily life except plain milk, SOME kind of meats (not all) and bread (made in a bakery, but again in this case if you want a bagette they charge you... the tax free bread is simply unedible).

And all for what you may ask?
Its all to support the public sector, which consists of around 4 out of every 10 workers (yes, almost 40% of workers in Uruguay belong to the public sector).
Someone who serves coffee in certain offices of the state, earns USD 2000 a month. All for serving coffee 30 hours a week.

Truly pathetic.
I should be ruling this shithole of a country, and then the differences would be ASTONISHING!

 

damn i guess we got it good in the states for now, our gov I think is the worst out of then all. no joke

 

Africans people play videogames !!!!!
Of course , depends the country !!!

 

I live in Japan. It's difficult since all the new games are so awful.

 

My wives family lives in the Philippines.
There is no support there for 360 or wii, only ps3 within the past year.

To own a console is to spend nearly half a year salary on a console... There is very little middle class, but many kids get games from aunts and uncles living abroad.

Unless you live in manila (metropolitan area population nearly 18,000,000) there is no toys r us at all so you go through a different chain called robinsons usually for games.

Most are imported from hong kong or japan so they ship with funky power converters... And forget online, most dsl is unfit for it.

 

:lol:

:clap:

 

In Brazil, there's no difficulty at all.

Biggest problem is that games are taxes as gambling machines. So officially imported consoles are expensive, but you can always buy in stores that import it through Paraguay, making the price more reasonable.

PC Games have good prices. Console games are more expensive, but anyone these days can buy online. Plus there's the used market.

It could be better (lower taxes), but at least it's improving.

 

Here in Argentina it isn't difficult to buy games/consoles, but they charge insane prices. An average middle class person makes about AR$ 3000 per month, that's about U$S 750, but big videogame companies like Nintendo charge you like U$S 500 for a Wii.

The other option available is the black market, there it's possible to get a Wii for U$S 325, it's still really expensive but MUCH cheaper than through an official retailer.

 

I remember that around 1998, in Iran, they started to sell bnmib asian specs megadrive II (sega official) and official playstation (first models) in all the electronic buildings. You could also find tons of famiclones, HK copies of megadrive (such as terminator and other stuff like that)
But it was almost impossible to find a single official game, all the megadrive stuff was either HK XX games in 1 or random loose cartidge with dirty printed insert. As for the playstation games, they were sold with a poorly printed label, front and back photocopied cover everything put in a plastic sheet.
I remember the systems were expensive but the games were quite affordable.

Last time I went there to visit my family (I think it was in 2005), I couldn't find anything gaming related. Can't tell what happened.

 

Poland here, not so bad right now, cause ppl can afford newer gaming systems and buy original games for new systems. But back in the days of the famiclones, boy was it great! Those were my best times at gaming. Trading cartridges or going to the local market, to visit the russian who sold cardtridges. How I loved that! Then my brother bought an amiga, copying disks from friends etc. And finally the playstation, everywhere they openly offered modding your system. Burned copies in stores were 10$ a CD (with today's currency), HA! FF8 would cost 40$, while you could get an original for 60-70$ . From then it was all getting better, well there are people who mod and burn their games still, but it's not on such a big scale now.

 

Isn't brazil known for having sega genesis consoles for sale till like, 2001?

 

That's really interesting. Any other details on gaming in Iran?

 

Still sell them to this day.

 

Wow, reading these posts make me think how great is the market in Brasil.

It's always more expensive than USA, but I think it works.

PC games usually have a launch price of R$ 99,00, that's almost US$ 60.00.

Console games varies. In the N64 days they were sold at R$ 99,00 up to R$ 199,00 for those special versions with big boxes and acessories included.
The Saturn games were sold from something like R$ 59,00 or R$ 69,00 up to I-don't-know-the-maximum-prices-I-was-too-young.
Playstation was never officialy supported. It was pirated as nothing before it.
I've never seen pirates for N64 and Saturn at they time. Just several years later.
Dreamcast games were sold at the same prices of the N64, I think. They were something like rivals at the time, with various same games, like Toy Story 2 and Spider Man. I don't know about special versions cause my main system as a kid was the N64 and Game Boy Color (yay Pokémon era!).
Playstation 2, no support. Pirated just like the other.
Game Cube! Believe! 6 games oficially realeased!! I remember just six. Soon Gradiente broke with Nintendo and there's no more Nintendo until today. They did a great support for the Game Boy Advance, tough. But no support for GBA SP. It wasn't released here.
Xbox, no support. Known by nerds as the best of the generation. Average people just play PS2 with some soccer game. I remember mostly not knowing what a GameCube or a Xbox was.
Xbox 360, official support! Nice, but, launch prices usually at R$ 159,00, that's almost US$ 95.00. And there's a lot of games more expensive than that.
Wii, no official support. US versions launch prices at R$ 159,00 and above. Some games receive portuguese box and instructions but it's not really official. It's weird.
PS3, official support in 2009 togheter with the PS2! I don't know the prices of ps3 games, tough. But they are expensive.
For old titles you can always find games for Xbox 360, Wii, PS3 at R$ 99,00, some games at R$ 59,00 or even less. It varies.

Tec Toy still sells Master Systems and Mega Drives. They released a couple of years ago the Mega Drive 4 Guitar Idol. It comes with a guitar lol. Don't ask me about it cause I just don't like and don't care about guitar games. Last year I think it was released a second version for this Mega Drive 4 already.
They have several models of Master Systems and Mega Drives. But for some years they don't use the name Sega on them. Just the Tec Toy name. And they have the Zeebo now. Cellphone games on the TV, oh please...