By Eli Green
September 21, 2007 - 10:00
As long as home video game systems have been around, Canadians have always paid more money to purchase their systems and their games because of the lower value of the Canadian Dollar. It's almost an unwritten rule. If Americans pay $49.99 for a game, Canadians will pay $59.99. If Americans pay $29.99, Canadians will pay $34.99 or, sometimes, $39.99. The list goes on, but the pattern is generally the same.
When I originally began writing this article, the value of one Canadian Dollar was 97.22 cents American. In other words, the American Dollar was barely worth three cents more than the Canadian. The price had been hovering around the 95 to 96 cent mark for quite some time. With the value of the Canadian Dollar being so high, it's hard not to wonder, just how much are we paying for our games?
If you take a look at any currency converter you can easily find a very close exchange rate for the prices of any system or game. All you have to do is type in the cost of the game in Canadian Dollars and have the converter change it to American. The result is how much you pay. Keep in mind to calculate the prices before taxes, since the tax varies province to province and is usually lower in the U.S. Anyway.
Wii: MSRP of $249.99 USD/$279.99 CAD – Canadians are paying approx. $272.19 USD before taxes.
Wii at $289.99 CAD price – Canadians are paying approx. $281.91 USD before taxes.
Xbox 360 Premium MSRP of $349.99 USD/$399.99 CAD – Canadians are paying approx. $388.85 USD before taxes.
Playstation 3 60GB MSRP of $499.99 USD/$549.99 CAD – Canadians are paying approx. $534.67 USD before taxes.
Average MSRP of Wii games $49.99 USD/$59.99 CAD – Canadians are paying approx. $58.32 USD before taxes
Average MSRP of Xbox 360 and PS3 games $59.99 USD/$69.99 CAD – Canadians are paying approx. $68.04 before taxes.
With the Canadian Dollar at that value, Canadians were coming very close to paying the Canadian price of systems and games in American Dollars. That means that since the Canadian Dollar has hit par with the American Dollar, but the prices have gone unchanged, a Playstation 3 or Xbox 360 costs $50 more in Canada, a Wii costs $30 or $40 more, and so on.
Under most circumstances it is understandable that retailers don't change their prices immediately when the value of the currency rises. Their products are commonly purchased in advance, at a specific price, which must be compensated for. However, with video games, things work a little bit differently. When a manufacturer drops the price on their product, the retailers make that price drop right away (as can be seen with Sony's recent drop for the North American price of the Playstation 3 or Microsoft's price drop for all Xbox 360 models). It seems that until the system manufacturers say they will be officially dropping the prices, the retailers won't change them, even with the value of the Dollar.
As those comments were made when the Canadian Dollar was still a couple of cents away from parity with the American Dollar, we are hoping to get updated responses soon. If Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft make any changes to their comments, we'll let you know.
*Currency
conversion results from Oanda Currency Converter