SPORE Released 5 Days Early In Australia 179
knypha writes "Several sites are reporting that the much anticipated SPORE has been released 5 days ahead of the scheduled release date in Australia. I can confirm that SPORE is sitting on shelves in retailers and for the tidy sum of A$95.95 it can be yours. Why the early release exactly seems to be a matter of contention. No news if the game can actually be played yet or if the lucky early punters will still have to wait till the official release when EA allows for any validation process to occur. I guess EA could possibly be using the relatively small population to test the servers...or someone somewhere stuffed up!"
Good luck to australian gamers (Score:2, Funny)
Paying A$95.95 for the privilege of hosing your system down with SecuROM. I can't say I envy you.
Re:Good luck to australian gamers (Score:5, Insightful)
If it uses SecuROM I'm just going to torrent it.
Buy + torrent (Score:2)
Sadly this is what many will do, including myself. I don't want to break the law or support piracy, but I am mad keen on checking out the game after spending hours on the creature creator.
Thus I have ordered my copy of the game, yet the torrent is currently running. I wont ever run out of account activations but I'll be damned if I am letting a game install what is essentially Malware on my PC.
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Just because no one likes SecuROM doesn't mean one is entitled to download the game for free.
Re:Good luck to australian gamers (Score:4, Insightful)
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But why DOWNLOAD it at all? If you've bought a physical copy, you could just make an image and use it in Daemon Tools with SecuROM emulation enabled. Seems like a huge waste of bandwidth to me.
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He should buy it if he wants to play it
Unfortunately, he has to pirate it to ensure he can play it.
I just hope Fallout 3 won't follow this sad trend. If all games start going the "online activation, max 3 installs" route, I might have to find a new hobby. I sure as hell won't buy games in this state.
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Circumventing security features is only a crime in the Land of the Free...
I will buy and modify the product as I see fit.
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By buying it, you are endorsing the protection.
I'm so much against the notion that I should need to break a protection scheme on something I bought (it's legal where I live), that I refuse to buy it to begin with. They know what they need to do to get my money. Their move.
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I don't know if his statement necessarily means that he won't buy a copy. It could mean that he'll buy a copy of the game and if it uses some shitty DRM that really should be drug out behind the barn and murdered with an axe he'll get a cracked version and not have to worry about it getting in his way. I circumvent DRM all the time by storing my ripping my DVDs and backing them up on a hard drive. Then I can watch them on my modded Xbox without having to switch discs around or worry about the disc being dam
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Yes. If at all possible, I'd like to write a check to Will Wright saying "Thanks for Spore, but don't ever put that kind of DRM on your games again." . I will not support the use of something that essentially hijacks my machine. In case I do torrent it, I'd like to be able to send Will Wright a check, but that's unlikely to be possible. Either which way, EA won't get my money for the PC version.
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I don't want Spore for free, but I do want Spore. I will forego paying for it (which is easier for me) in philosophical protest of a third party program that is harmful to my machine. I don't even let Steam (PunkBuster) run anymore because of its behavior after closing Steam. Anything that continues to run outside of its purpose is probably leaky, i
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Then run it with wine in a chroot environment if you're worried about the control of your machine.
Spore will work in wine if you look on wine-patches mailing list for the setScissorRect patch and getStencilDepth. It hasn't been included in the main git tree yet because the code doesn't mimic windows behaviour exactly, but it'll make Spore work.
There, now you can play Spore without any worry of the DRM effecting your machine. You can also now play Steam games too so go knock yourself out and have some safe f
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I will be getting a Mac powerbook then I'll go for Wine, but that is the best solution. Ty.
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Yet you didn't bother to offer an explanation. Because you don't have one. Because you're a fucking moron.
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Nope, wasn't a troll. Try harder.
Shit, moderating sure is difficult (for some people).
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Oh wait, you're full of shit. I pirate games very, very rarely, and in most cases they're old games.
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I only steal canned ham and evaporated milk from the grocery store, and in most cases they're past their Best By date.
Thieves suck.
--
Don't steal the dream - don't steal music.
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And I'm sure you have never broken a single law in your life. Never downloaded an MP3, for instance.
Give me a fucking break and crawl back under your rock.
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Just because someone mentions SecuROM doesn't mean he's going to pirate it.
I, for one, won't be buying it because of SecuROM and because EA are using Cider instead of making a real Mac port.
Re:Good luck to australian gamers (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you *don't* want them making it on the Mac at all - or if it just plain doesn't work well under Cider - than don't let the fact it's not native stop you from getting it. While making games for the Mac is still so uncommon this kind of thing should be encouraged, not discouraged. Later when it's considered SOP to make games of the Mac you can go ahead and complain about such things.
Amen to that (Score:3, Interesting)
Amazing how folks on Slashdot think that the industry is totally deaf.
"I'm too much of a Mac snob to buy games that would even function on another system."
"I pay $15 a month for WoW because I have to but torrent everything else I can get my hands on, because I hate DRM."
Its almost like that sort of attitude among customers might, hmm, drive business decisions or something.
Re:Amen to that (Score:5, Interesting)
Child does good you praise it, child does bad you put it in time out. Dog does good you give it a treat, dog does bad you stuff it's face in the mess it made and yell "bad dog." EA does over-all net good you buy their game, EA does bad you boycott it and maybe yell on their forums. Don't try to say "Making for mac is good but [details]." Details are confusing while they're still struggling with the whole Mac-good or Mac-bad thing. Again, like children or dogs it may take a good number of reward-punishment cycles before these ideas start sinking in and you can try to teach it something else. Don't be discouraged when yet another game is released with DRM or Cider.
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The problem is that this child has over a million parents telling them they don't care, and little less than a hundred parents telling them it's bad. The over a million people are the ones that make the company money, the few hundreds are those that don't.
To each his own opinion and all that, and far be it from me to judge how you spend your money. In fact, I think that DRM is a good reason not to spend your money, but saying "bad dog" to
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So, a company doing a half-assed job of "porting" a game to the Mac should make me want to buy it?
Cider is so demanding on the hardware that it can't even support the GMA950 GPU for the Mac. Strangely enough, all Mac minis have GMA950 and so do all the previous generations of Macbooks.
That's a bit of a brain-dead decision on EA's part to drop maybe a third of Mac users, given that we're supposed to be about 8% of gamers at most (if we believe the usual numbers).
The worst part is, GMA950 is enough if you run
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Sorry but my money will go to Blizzard
What is this comment for? I love Blizzard and, to quote teh_pwnerer, "EA can suck my balls." I'd much prefer $random_person do business with companies like Blizzard rather than EA.
That's a bit of a brain-dead decision on EA's part to drop maybe a third of Mac users, given that we're supposed to be about 8% of gamers at most (if we believe the usual numbers).
From the comments I've seen here, it seems a bit of a brain-dead decision on EA's par
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Firstly, while I'm opposed to copy protection of this flavour in general, SecuROM is one of the tamer options out there. Yes, it causes problems for some users, but really, there's far worse out there. For instance, the horror that is StarForce. That's an example of a copy protection that crosses the line so blatantly, that it would be justified to all-out refuse to buy the game. SecuROM has if anything improved recently, notab
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Firstly, while I'm opposed to copy protection of this flavour in general, SecuROM is one of the tamer options out there. Yes, it causes problems for some users, but really, there's far worse out there.
Just because it's not as bad as others doesn't make it somehow acceptable. "Theft is okay, at least they didn't also rape and murder"
I don't believe it's fair or at all reasonable to let Maxis suffer because of the inclusion of SecuROM
So, what, EA is holding some innocent people hostage? We have to pay the bad people at EA so they don't make the poor developers who have to stick with them starve? The individuals can quit and join other companies or start up their own. I'm not going to demonize them for it (just the people who actually made the choice to put in the DRM) but I'm not going to fund them, ei
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Not buying it because of SecuROM is certainly NOT justified, for many reasons. Firstly, while I'm opposed to copy protection of this flavour in general, SecuROM is one of the tamer options out there. Yes, it causes problems for some users, but really, there's far worse out there. For instance, the horror that is StarForce. That's an example of a copy protection that crosses the line so blatantly, that it would be justified to all-out refuse to buy the game. SecuROM has if anything improved recently, notably, the v.7.x series can install and run in a non-administrator account, which has obvious security and stability benefits.
I will admit to not being 100% sure about the technical details in this regard, but is the 3-activation limit part of SecuROM? If so, you are so very wrong. If not, you may be correct (I disagree, having experienced SecuROM problems in the past, but I do not know the numbers at large), but there is a related, *very* justified reason in this ridiculous restriction.
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Cider _is_ native code. All the way down. The only real difference (user interface issues aside, and most games don't use the native UI in any event) is that each DirectX call obviously goes through one more stack frame before it hits the hardware (game->cider directX->OpenGL->driver rather than game->directX->driver).
It's been my experience that the speed difference in Cedega (or lack thereof) from a 'native' DirectX implementation is marginal. With Cider, one would assume any differences
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Too bad it works on 99% of home users without causing problems.
From what I've seen it does not work for 99% of home users without causing problems. It's just they don't realize it's causing problems or don't care when they can just phone up the techy kid across the street or when Geek Squad tells them they just need more RAM. Don't confuse a lack of understanding or care with a lack of problems.
SecuROM is just how you're justifying to yourself receiving the software they paid money to produce, without paying for it.
Perhaps that would be true if people who were boycotting this because of the DRM pirated DRM-free games like (non-GOTY edition) Oblivion, which was a highly successful game.
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No issues yet, but now my PC feels tainted...
Oh... (Score:4, Funny)
Oh the PURE and UNADULTERATED HORROR of it all!
It's clear why they are doing it (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's clear why they are doing it (Score:5, Funny)
Nah, Bill Wright visits slashdot from time to time and he read many Australians whining about their lousy Internet conditions... so he thought he'd give them a 5-day head start.
It also gives us the rest of the world a chance to whine about our lousing gaming conditions.
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It's not 5 days early anyway. It was always going to be released here on the 4th, so only 2 days early.
makes sense (Score:4, Funny)
Too expensive. (Score:5, Interesting)
Like for most games, our stores once again double the price for no reason other than that they can. If I buy this at all it'll be an import from somewhere like play-asia.
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Not the stores, but the distributors.
Re:Too expensive - If you buy retail (Score:2)
Your a geek, shop online like the rest of us
http://www.cheapgames.com.au/spore-pc-p-2032.html [cheapgames.com.au] - A$74.95
It's Simple (Score:5, Funny)
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And they would happily swap cane toads with penis creatures.
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Who wouldn't?!
Re:It's Simple (Score:5, Funny)
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Yes, it is confirmed that you can play early (Score:4, Interesting)
I do not have a slashdot account, so I doubt that I will be seen.
But the whole reason this story broke is do to this person here.
http://forums.facepunchstudios.com/showthread.php?t=603042
The bastard is gloating in his 15 mins of Internet fame. :p
yay australia (Score:2)
Didn't we stuff this up once before? With the release of halo 3 or something similarly boring?
In Soviet Australia... oh. nevermind.
/Mike
Ambivalent (Score:3, Funny)
I'm not sure if Aussies should be boosting that they get first crack at this game or shamed at revealing how much computer games cost down there...
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I'm not sure if Aussies should be boosting that they get first crack at this game or shamed at revealing how much computer games cost down there...
haha... "first crack"... Is that a challenge? lol
Seriously though, I'm getting angrier and angrier at how much games cost here. I almost never buy retail anymore, and no doubt the games companies will blame it on piracy.
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Until they make it so you CAN'T import the game, fallout 3 for instance, imported copies found in customs will be confiscated and the receiver fined for attempting to import a prescribed item :/
Now, even if the price is the same to import, I usually will, just to drain these local over-charging bastards.
let us rejoice, for we are young and poor... (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, you know it's great and all that we Aussies are getting it early. Too bad we have to take out a mortgage just to pay for the bloody thing.
The gouging the video game industry does against Australians is absolutely deplorable. The local EB games is still trying to flog off the Warcraft 3 Battlechest - part of which is almost 8 years old - for $110!! At current exchange rates that's about $95 US.
I order my games from the UK and even with shipping it's practically half price. The best part is you get around the stupid censorship imposed by Senator Atkinson.
With all of the BS we're forced to tolerate, plus the whole descendants from convicts thing, it shouldn't be too surprising that many Australians turn to "alternate channels" of distribution for their video gaming needs.
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convicts = underclass (Score:2)
The convicts thing is because they criminalised being a member of the urban poor.
In my city, Nottingham, if you stole over the price of a loaf of bread you went to the gallows. Transportation was often for anti-social behaviour such as gossiping (I wish I was joking).
There's a list of 10,000 names in The Galleries of Justice [gallerieso...ice.org.uk]. The role call of the underclass. The footings for the gallows are still in the street outside.
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I keep making the mistake of going to local game stores like EB or JB HiFi and am constantly reminded of why I might as well just so all my game shopping online.
Problem is that sometimes I want games quicker than a weeks shipping. But seriously, we really do get asked to tolerate some utter fucking bullshit. When a game is cheaper even after you include
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I blame lack of sleep.
All the rest of us were blaming the fact that you're obviously a stupid dickhead.
If it uses ShittyRom, im going to buy it, crack it (Score:2)
5 Days Early? (Score:4, Funny)
Duh, it's because of time zones. When it's Thursday here in the states, it's like February in Australia.
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And yet... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What's so great about this game? (Score:4, Funny)
I anticipate that Spore is going to get pretty boring pretty quickly. It doesn't look like it'll have much replay value.
Re:What's so great about this game? (Score:4, Insightful)
I imagine someone saying something very similar right before the release of SimCity and TheSims. "It's just creating a city, how many times through do you really need to play it?"
Re:What's so great about this game? (Score:4, Funny)
I guess I should have elaborated, because I wasn't making a joke. Spore just looks like it will quickly become very repetitive and dull.
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Spore might not be a good game, but being repetitive should never be seen as a negative. Games are repetitive, and repetitive != dull.
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Some games are more repetitive than others, and some types of repetition are not as good as others. Spore looks like it'll get boring very quickly.
Re:What's so great about this game? (Score:4, Funny)
I guess I should have elaborated, because I wasn't making a joke. Spore just looks like it will quickly become very repetitive and dull.
It's supposed to be a sandbox. Did you have a sandbox as a kid? I did. It was only as boring as the limits of your imagination.
Of course, if Spore turns out to be a crappy sandbox, then you can't really blame it for being boring. But Maxis has had a history of creating good sandboxes so I don't think I'll have to eat my words.
I just want Stephen Colbert to cover the game so we can see him do a Spore Report.
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Cell stage was kinda hectic and reminded me of flow, didn't get boring before it was time to move along.
Creature stage got boring and fast, maybe next time through I'll try something aside from killing everything in sight.
Tribe stage was fun and gave me a surprising amount of challenge for easy difficulty setting.
And then I was designing a town hall for the start of Civ stage when it crashed, rebuilding that is going to be tedious as hell.
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Did I ever say that my post is to be taken as fact? Did I ever say that it isn't just my opinion?
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Just because you can do lots of things doesn't mean those things won't quickly become shallow and uninteresting.
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What the fuck are you talking about?
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Okay, so it's got elements of SimLife (which took a great amount of Skill) and it's got elements of SimCity (which took a deft amount of SittingAroundWaiting) and it's got elements of The Sims (which took, ok - you're right, no Skill at all, rather maybe Charisma) and then it's got elements of SimCity (not really).
But c'mon, it's made by the same guy who made those other titles (or at least signed off on them) Will Wright. Generally every game he says is good for RTM is a platinum deal. If he doesn't sign
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It also seems to have elements from a game I once played on Amiga. You started out as a bug and evolved to a human. Graphics were amazing wire vectors and all.
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i miss that game - but i am still not intrestedin spore
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I remember buying it so long ago, but the hype was too much for the game to live up to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eco_(computer_game) [wikipedia.org]
Screenshots from the Atari-ST version:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/atari-st/eco/screenshots [mobygames.com]
Ah, memories...
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Ah, ECO, I am pretty sure it was more awesome that it now looks.
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But c'mon, it's made by the same guy who made those other titles (or at least signed off on them) Will Wright.
That, by itself, means nothing. SimLife I haven't heard of, so I can't really judge it. But although I love SimCity, I think The Sims is pure shit, and is the worst idea for a non-game I've ever seen (seriously... if I want to live real life, I'll do it, not play a game about it). Surely I can't be the only one for whom Will Wright's name carries very little weight, just because his stuff is so hit-and-miss as to whether it'll be great or terrible.
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SimLife is one of those that really makes you scratch your head. Compare also SimEarth, SimPark and SimAnt. Then there's the SimTower that was never part of the Sim series.
But then again, WW was responsible for the SimCity series, and that's one that most of us grew up on. I know I started with SimCity Classic and then loved SC2k and SC3, etc, so that's what I base my opine on. I have never personally played The Sims, so don't count me in the group of having to live through an avatar. Sounds cute, if y
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I'll agree that SimCity is great, and that Spore is intriguing... I'm just saying that I refuse to get hyped up about a game just because it has Will Wright's name on it, cause he's had some real duds too.
I'll yarr-harr Spore to see if it's any good, and if it is, I'll buy it. I'm not closed-minded, just cautious.
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Well yeah I agree about the "Will Wright stamp of approval".
You'll notice I was responding to an AC, so took a little liberty in making myself a "Will Wright" fanboi, but have a look at a little more obtuse game, that looks like it was the progenitor of Spore:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimEarth:_The_Living_Planet [wikipedia.org]
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All those Sims games were great. I still play them.
SimCity2000 and Sims Deluxe Edition + vacation are my personal favourites. I'd play SimAnt if there was a working windows version.
It's too bad they don't lump all the old sims software and sell it as a single package for like 20$. Better than having it rot on somebody's shelf somewhere, while we suffer. Or pull a Rockstar and put it up as downloadable for free.
Re:Importing (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Importing (Score:5, Informative)
Direct download from EA is £39.95, or £42.94 if you want to be able to redownload for 2 years instead of 6 months. 95.95 AUD is £45, so not that much of a markup.
Of course, if I buy a physical copy, I can get it for £28, or £30 if I want it (almost) guaranteed on release day, so you do have to wonder what EA are thinking with that download price..
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Alternately, you could pirate it for free!
Oops, did I say that out loud?
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That same copy (warCE) from Amazon (US) was about $110AU, or if you want to get a few from gamestop about $105ea.
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That's easy: "Let's make an extra profit from the people who can't wait an extra day, and make sure we don't piss off retailers by setting a price that could actually be seen as competition."
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39.95 GBP = 70.9170 USD
£29.99, "Despatched in time for delivery on release day" [game.co.uk].
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"Huge markup for apparently no reason" = ask gov't (Score:2)
I often wonder at how people in countries with a VAT (and, relatedly, Americans living in localities with high sales taxes) are shocked, shocked that when they compare notes with friends abroad prices are lower.
Australia has a Goods & Services tax. 10% on the top. Considering I paid US$60 for my copy with no sales taxes, I'm guessing about a third of your "no reasons" are in Melbourne by now.
(You know you guys used to have a 35% duty on packaged software? Fun times. Thankfully that got removed in '8
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Notably, the price is in Australian dollars. In American its 81.36$. Still a huge markup for apparently no reason.
Er... to confirm the game prices... $49.99 and $79.99 [gamestop.com] for the regular or "collectors" edition, respectively.
It would be helpful to identify which version people are talking about. Because that $81.36 would be on par with the "collectors" edition version.
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Well, I guess I should follow up to myself. The Games Wherehouse Australia is listing it as $89.99 and $139.99 [gameswarehouse.com.au]. Which is, indeed, a lot more at an American $ exchange rate being ~$76.36 and $118.80
I'm going to have to speculate and ask, does Australia have a VAT tax? Are they adding on some 50% "games tax" or something but since it's VAT the consumers don't actually see this tax?