Japanese games have going up in prce for some time now. But this month they suddenly had a jump! Its just with the games im usually looking for or any other people noticed the sudden jump last weeks?
I moved the thread, it was not in the proper location. The prices going up could be over the fluctuating Yen/Dollar.
Battle Garegga is cheaper on Ebay than it is on some Amazon store fronts. $156 and $170 US Vs $125 median on Ebay
More like people are asking more money. Prices have improved noticeably in the last two months, but it's still shit compared to before.
Nah it's been going on for months. For the formats i do go for (Wii & DS) it seems theres about 3 or 4 main sellers all based in Japan that are charging extremely unrealistic prices, i could understand if it was a rare titles that are out of print but im seeing average stuff that i can still get new from play asia for $50-60 going for closer to $80-100 on ebay & the ebay copies are not even new they are used with just stock photos & usually listed as either good or very good. Looks like they are hoping that some idiot will bid on their used crappy condition one for an extortinate price lol yeah, i'll get a new one from play asia thanks lolol
It's probably becuase the US dollars is worth fuck all so sellers in Japan seem to be setting higher prices when in fact you need more dollars than you did. The Japanese seller is probably still charging the same price. To give you an idea, yesterday I took my son to the cinema go see the new Super Sentai (power rangers) movie. It cost me 1800 yen with 1000 of that being just for me. I can import a BluRay movie from the US Amazon store with the fastest shipping option and still be paying less that what I did to enter the cinema. Yakumo
Sounds about right. The dollar's value started to stabilize a bit in regards to Canada and the Euro which is a damn joke considering Canada has about 1/14th the GNP.
Nah it's way beyond just the strong exchange rate at the moment, if that was the case i'd be seeing the same crazy ebay prices at places like play asia as well. Play asia's prices did go up due to the exchange rate but nowhere near whats going on in ebay at the moment. Thankfully theres 2 sellers on ebay from Japan that haven't taken the piss with their prices yet.
The prices for cinema here is around the same. The dollar may have its share, but some prices almost doubled in the last month.
Well, if it's not all down to the US dollar then is could just be the good old supply and demand that is causing price increases. You have to remember that for the longest time Japanese games have always been very expensive but they seemed to fall an awful lot in the last 3 years. Could this be the return to the "normal" pricing? you also need to remeber that games cost more in Japan than what they do in the Us and Europe, including the UK. The average UK price for a 360 game is about 40 pounds. The RRP in Japan is from 6800 to 7800 which is 54 pounds to 61 pounds. That's almost 100 USD! This is going to have a big effect of export sales for those who don't buy in bulk to sell to the foreign markets. It also tell you why I import many of my 360 games from the Asian markets. Yakumo
It is the exchange rate at heart, but as Yakumo stated, that comes back to supply & demand, and other things. The source of these games is Japan... if they cost more in Japan, they're eventually going to cost more abroad.
Yeah, Im pretty sure its all have to be due to supply & demand. Only a few sellers from Japan would ship worldwide years ago, now theres a bunch of people in this export market opening stores on ebay, which made the prices drop. Now the retro Japanese games are being exported to all over the world, and those who buy them rarely let them go. And if you count the great increase in the collectors, this just sums up to the rise. My theory for the suddenly increase in the last couple months its that most collectors have receive bonus from their job, didnt traveled on vacations due economy crisis, etc. So they had more money to spend, forcing the prices up. But that my personal opinion.
Sellers usually charge more to help cover the different effort/risk level of handling international customers. Many games are much cheaper within Japan, but middle man fees can render that method's savings rather moot for importers.
