Price in the UK

[Craig Gamez Charlton]

How come the Ouya is $99 in the US and £99 in the UK, shouldn't it be £65 here? Why do we have to pay the extra? Or is it just a guess until it is officially released?

[AdyCarter]

Retail wanting profit, Import duties, the cost of replacing the US plug with a UK one and the fact VAT/Tax is charged at source amongst other things

[James Andrew Coote]

I think GAME are also taking a little bit of a profit (I think it works out like £82 or something after all the shipping, tax etc to order it from Amazon.com), so you're also paying to not have to wait for it to ship from the states. Plus I think £99 is a nice round figure, so it makes sense for GAME to do a little rounding up

[Grimbarian]

Plus I think £99 is a nice round figure, so it makes sense for GAME to do a little rounding up

I have to say I disagree here.

A huge part of the OUYA appeal (in addition to it's open nature and free-to-try aspects) is it's price bracket. It was one of the points that kept getting re-iterated in interviews, articles and on the Kickstarter by Julie and the OUYA team themselves.

At $99 it's about half the price of a new Xbox360 in the states (roughly).

At £99 it's only £30 less than a new Xbox 360 here from the same retailer.

To price at £84.99 or even £89.99 would have been a bit easier to swallow. (Even with the extra $20 shipping on the kickstarter I think mine came to £76 ish - I'm obviously waiting to see if I get stung for tax/customs when the OUYA finally ships in this direction)

This isn't a dig specifically at the OUYA - the Gamestick is doing the same thing ($79 in States & £79.99 in UK)

EU and UK are continually getting some very poor pricing from the vast majority of video game hardware and software producers.

It's not ENTIRELY their fault - customs/etc hold a degree of responsibility too.

[deadpool_merc]

Does anyone know if the $20 extra we paid during the Kickstarter will cover the customs charges or not yet?


Sent from my GT-N7100

[tickling]

Made the point already regarding its going to priced at the same price as Xbox / PS3 come E3. There is also the rumour of the $99 xbox 360 coming later this year.

[Craig Gamez Charlton]

Damn, the thing is I paid the kickstarter $25 for reserving a username knowing that the console would be cheap, now i gotta pay £99 on top of that, not sure if i'm going to bother now :/

[James Andrew Coote]

Technically, the kickstarter rewards are not products bought/sold, so aren't subject to import tax (they are like a free promotional product). I didn't pay any customs duty on my OUYA devkit to be shipped to the UK

Of course, some customs inspectors look a little suspiciously at such practices (namely, Argentinian and German devs had issues with customs withholding their consoles). But this kind of thing is in part what you're paying the shipping company for (in addition to actually transporting it obviously )

[Grimbarian]

Technically, the kickstarter rewards are not products bought/sold, so aren't subject to import tax (they are like a free promotional product). I didn't pay any customs duty on my OUYA devkit to be shipped to the UK
)

Thanks James - that's good to know and helpful information.

I did think this might be the case - but you know what it's like here in the UK...

[Naraneko]

Technically, the kickstarter rewards are not products bought/sold, so aren't subject to import tax (they are like a free promotional product).

I had problems with promotional products, as the EU Tax Policy say "As a general rule, gifts of taxable goods made in the course or furtherance of a business are liable to VAT unless their cost to the donor, excluding VAT, is €20 or less."

But it depends of the country, some are more strict.