OMG an Xbox 360 costs how much in Brazil?!?!?!?

[Majors]

Well then I stand corrected. Maybe because MS is US owned? Or since people in Brazil are used to paying so much for consoles, the powers that be kept the price high and are swimming in money.

[theclaw]

Postal corruption most likely is the bigger issue for smart gamers. I mean anyone with access to US pawn shops could help get various games at prices unfathomable in Brazil. Making them arrive however...

[fastbilly1]

Postal corruption most likely is the bigger issue for smart gamers.

jfrost correct me if I am wrong, but most of the government in Brasil is corrupt.

[ice445]

Heh, it's expensive, man. The games themselves cost about R$250 new, which is around US$120. A Wii goes for 350 dollars. A PS3 is 690 dollars, about the same price as a Xbox 360.

Brazil is crazy protectionist. We have super high taxes for electronics. We pay 121% taxes on games.

Not only taxes add to the prices but they are a huge barrier of entry to market players. Thus, not only we get to pay the taxes, we have to pay a ridiculous markup because competition is stifled.

It's a sad state of things, because most Brazilians are used to asking people to bring stuff from other countries that they can't afford in the country. It's just "normal" to ask for a friend visiting North America or Europe to bring a brand shoe or an iPad because prices here are prohibitive.

And when people come back to Brazil from a travel, they can't go above US$500 in purchases abroad. Obviously no one has ever respected this rule. So what most people do is they buy what they can, come back and pray they won't get chosen to do the Federal Police screening. If they are picked, they'll have to pay 50% in taxes over however much their stuff goes above 500 dollars.

But since we already pay so much in everything, people figure is worth the risk.

A campaign was launched recently called Jogo Justo (Fair Game) which calls for a tax cut for games.

But it's a chronic problem of Brazil. I won't even tell you how much we pay for cars. It's inhuman.

I can understand protectionist policy, but not in the case when the country in question has no domestic industry for the majority of important products like cars and electronics.

[MrPopo]

I can understand protectionist policy, but not in the case when the country in question has no domestic industry for the majority of important products like cars and electronics.

Clearly the reason there is no domestic industry for these items is because of the foreign competition.

[Menegrothx]

I can understand protectionist policy, but not in the case when the country in question has no domestic industry for the majority of important products like cars and electronics.

Clearly the reason there is no domestic industry for these items is because of the foreign competition.

It would be intresting to see what kind of games there would be if video games developed within different countries hadn't influenced each others at all, in other words if every major video game producing country had been like North Korea in that regard.

[jfrost]

Postal corruption most likely is the bigger issue for smart gamers.

jfrost correct me if I am wrong, but most of the government in Brasil is corrupt.

I guess it depends on what you mean by corruption.

Corruption in the sense that government officials don't respect laws? Or in the sense that the government adopts policies which generally hurt the population?

There is a high perception of corruption, but I don't think that the government is in general cripplingly corrupt, that officials don't respect laws and so on.

I think that the system is designed to screw people. So, the government isn't really "corrupt," it is actually very efficient in what it sets out to do.

These measures are intended to keep people from buying games and other goods from abroad, and they are very successful. Officials are not "corrupt", they are carrying out too efficiently their duties and by doing so they make people poorer. If there were more corruption we could arguably get more stuff from other countries.

[jfrost]

Postal corruption most likely is the bigger issue for smart gamers. I mean anyone with access to US pawn shops could help get various games at prices unfathomable in Brazil. Making them arrive however...

What do you mean by corruption? I don't think it's corrupt, the postal service actually follows the laws that are in the books. They are in fact very lenient. If they followed it to the letter, we wouldn't get anything.

It's possible to get stuff from abroad but occasionally it will get stuck in customs. If it does get stuck in customs, we have to pay a hefty sum to get hold of the thing we bought.

I've bought a lot of stuff over the internet from eBay. I've even considered buying from members on Racketboy, but decided against it. It's just too much trouble and I don't know whether I'd have problems with payments and so on.

Since the postal service works by sampling, people have devised some ways to get their things with minimal hassle.

I remember when I bought whey protein from the US. People from a bodybuilding website suggested I buy a 2 lb. container instead of a 5 pound one. Why? A bigger package would get stuck in customs while a smaller one wouldn't. It's quite annoying to have to jump through the hoops like this just to get such basic things.