GTA V: UK Gamers paying 30% less for pre-orders than European counterparts

Have you ever noticed that in certain countries games are cheaper or more expensive ? Now I am not JUST talking about tax differences, even neighboring countries in the EU show massive price differences up-to 30% in pre-order and you need to wonder why. Product price comparison website idealo.co.uk performed some internal checking on that and started to grab and compare some data. 

The findings really are interesting as in the UK it seems that they guys and gals are paying 30% less for pre-orders than European counterparts. So they kept an eye on pre-ordering prices for the release of Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto 5, probably the biggest console title of the year, with a PC release hopefully not too far far away.  By gathering prices across its UK and European sister websites in Austria, France, Germany, Italy and Poland they learned that there are significant differences in the prices being charged in the UK. Idealo.co.uk looked at the prices of the standard editions of GTA5 twenty days prior to release for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

Some interesting stats then, Germany for example pays 34% more for Grand Theft Auto on Xbox and a whopping 37% more for the PlayStation 3 version (compared to the UK). For 3 of the 6 countries, idealo prices between the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 versions varied, with only France, Poland and the United Kingdom offering identical best prices across both formats. We do have to keep in mind that English-language versions of games usually are cheaper as country specific translation have to be made. But still. 

When looking at France the gap does close a little with a 20% price difference (but both France and Germany use nearly the same currency and rates and  V.A.T. (19% and 19.6% respectively) whilst in the UK the V.A.T. is higher at 20%.

Here are two tables courtesy of idealo Table 1: % difference relative to the UK idealo pre-release price:

Table 2: Prices in GBP (2)

Notes:

(1) All non-euro prices converted into euros prices.
(2) Conversion via XE.com on 29.08.2013. 1 Euro = 0.855 GBP. 1 Zloty = 0.23 Euro. 1 Zloty = 0.20 GBP

Prices in each country refer to standard editions with language localization. The cheapest prices taken from idealo’s websites (Listed prices excluding delivery). 

Final words of advice, if you like to play the game in the English only language version, why not purchase it from the United Kingdom and save some money ?

Source: www.idealo.co.uk