That's right. I just read that Sony officially announced that they'll start manufacturing PSTwo's in Brazil and will released the console officially in 2009. The production will be aimed to the South American market. It's just me or are they too late? :110: Wouldn't it be more interesting to assembly the PS3 here to export it to the whole American continent? Honestly, doubt they'll be able to compete with the "black market". You can buy a brand new PSTwo for the same price of that Tectoy MD with 100+ games. With they paying taxes, the price probably will be higher. If they are doing this to test the market, i still say they'll fail. Gamers nowadays save money to buy the the Wii, the Xbox360 or the PS3. Let's not forget the DS and PSP. Microsoft took a while but released the Xbox360 here officially. People may say it's cheaper to buy imported, but Microsoft Brasil gives 3 year warranty. And on the 360, that's important. Even the PSP would be a better choice. Anyway, if they make the games here, i'll probably get it cheaper than importing...
Didn't Nintendo do something similar in China with the handheld gizmo that's been talked about here quite a lot, lately (ique?... I'm sorry, I forget the name.) As you suggest, it may be a market-tester that will probably end in failure because of cheaper black-market rivals. What they should probably start doing is selling games at local rates, this is what they did with dvd's in Russia, this has been going on for a while which suggests it is actually working. Besides, don't console manufacturers actually lose money on each console sold? (and recoup it with game sales?) Still, it will be interesting to see. No doubt it will be righteously dissected by other members here, when it does eventually get released.
If they can keep the prices down I am sure it would sell. But like you said above it would be prone to piracy. It would be like Thailand or Korea. Shop everywhere doing installs and selling them.
ique was different, it used flash media and kiosks to keep costs down. I'm not sure how successful it was, but I thought it worked well.
Something that caught my eye with the iQue DS or whatever was that there were a few GBA games in DS cases on cards. Kinda wierd.
Seriously. Here the only reason people buy 360's and wii's is because games are cough cheap cough. PS3 games can't be "cheap" and if they were it probably would sell alot more. By cheat I mean pirated, and yes this is the moving force of the gaming industry in latin america. Its pretty sad really. If the latin american market bought the same quantity of burnt games they buy now I could see a high increase in the percentage of console games sold.
It's not that people around here are poor (anyway this is a reality in many countries), the big deal are the prices. I mean, would you pay 500 dollars or more for a Wii knowing what is it worth in USA/Europe? The only way to get this stuff at reasonable prices is traveling elsewhere and bring it without the box so they can see you're not selling it (many times it's sold anyway :110, otherwise you'll have to pay an extra of the 60% of what the article is worth here. And AFAIK Brazilian laws about importing are much stronger than here, so you can make an idea of what kind of prices are they handling there. For example, a month ago someone from Minas Gerais, Brazil bought me by MercadoLibre (eBay in Latin America) 2 small pendrives (1GB) and told me that the price of both (about USD 10 each one) plus another 10 dollars for shipping was cheaper than getting them there. I don't know if this is a particular case or something, but I got shocked... And LEo, piracy is a big reality and it doesn't seem like it's gonna change for a long while, since original game stores have not found a way to compete with pirated game stores. They have way more games, they're extremely easy to find and the prices are ridiculously low. I don't love piracy at all, but in some moments you just have no choice.
+1. I still think it's a positive step by Sony to cater to markets at the local level. But they'll have to try harder.
As for Piracy, the brazilian government is taking actions on the last few years. This made Brazil, the "BRIC" country with lowest piracy. Still high anyways. The big problem is that the government taxes stuff thinking they are protecting the brazilian industry. For example, when Microsoft started selling the 360 here, a magazine made an article explaining why the taxes made the price go high: "The Miracle of Multiplication" See an aproximated calculation of the taxes, over the sale on the Xbox 360 in Brazil. This does not include the costs to bring the product to the country, nor the value subsidized by the company. Original console price: R$ 860 (1) 20% of Import Tax: R$ 1 032 50% of IPI (Industrialized Product Tax): R$ 1 548 9,25% of PIS/Cofins on Importation: R$ 1 690 18% of ICMS on importation: R$ 2 000 25% of ICMS on sale: R$ 2 500(2) 9,25% of PIS/Cofins on sale: R$ 2 730(3) (1) 400 dolars using the currency at the time (2) This on São Paulo. ICMS value changes from state to state (3) The final price, on release date was 2 999 reais, including extra itens, like some games PS: Importation Taxes to companies are lower. For normal people it's 60%! So that's it. 400 Dollars + Import tax. The next tax, IPI (50%) is not over the 400, but on top of the 480 (400 + Import Tax). And this goes on and on, in a cascade effect. But there's a way for the government can help the videogame market and increase their tax income. Before 2003, most of the computers sold in Brazil to small companies and regular people were assembled in computer stores with parts imported through Paraguay (of course not paying taxes) This type of computers represented, at that time, more than 80% of the computers sold in the whole country. After the government "killed" the PIS/Cofins taxes on computers, the computers assembled in Brazil by legalized companies, had the price went down 15%! A year later they reduced the IPI tax (Industrialized product tax) on 95% to companies that decided to assembly computers and Notebooks here in Brazil. This made companies like Dell, HP, Toshiba, and others to start manufacturing computers here, and some brazilian ones like Itautec, Positivo, CCE and Preview to increase their investment on the production to compete with the new companies. After this, the "gray market" shrunk every single year, making legal computers representing today, almost 90% of the market. The government simply killed the black market, just by lowering taxes and helping the industry. Lower taxes = Lower price = More companies = More Jobs = More consumption = More tax income (not over tax value itself, but from quantity). Simple huh? Still the Brazilian government didn't realized how games are one of the most powerful media these days. There's a project on the Congress to do the same thing they did with computers but they haven't put in to vote yet. Latin America can be poor, but Brazil is not poor. Is one of the richiest countries in the world. Yes, there is poverty here, but on the last 2 decades it had a huge grown of people from lower class to the middle class. Wii here costs 1.500 Reais. PS3? 1800 till 2.300. Xbox360: 2.399 Reais. All this paying taxes. You can find it a bit cheaper on some game stores, that get them from Paraguay (thus not paying taxes). Still would you have them for 3 Months warranty? I wouldn't. For some people paying 240 Reais on a game (pratically the same value of minimum wage here, is too much. So they head to piracy. Funnily enough the PS3 sell well here, even though there's no piracy on it. Even though there's all these difficulties, the legal videogame market is growing. The Brazilian NC Games is the biggest games distributor in whole Latin America. Canadian's Synergex also distributes games here. Gaming companies like EA and Ubisoft are stabilished here, Ubisoft has a gaming studio in São Paulo. Videogame chain stores like Gamers (Mexican), Proximo Games (USA) are opening stores here... I just hope the government sees the opportunity. PS: Cellphone gaming market is huge down here.
