Sony announced recently that they will no longer be including pricing information for the games they discuss on the PlayStation Blog within those blog posts; it was a bit of a troubling move for many, since a lot of people relied on PlayStation Blog’s blog posts to summarize details and purchasing information about games succinctly. Instead, Sony will include links to the games’ PlayStation Store pages, where users can click through and see pricing information relevant to their region, which can vary greatly depending on where you are.
And this disparity in local regional prices is the reason that Sony will no longer have pricing information on the PlayStation Blog itself.
“It’s a change we’ve made for a reason, and I want to offer you a bit more background on what that is,” Sony said. “Here at SCEE, we cater for a huge number of territories across Europe and beyond, many of which use different currencies. In fact, we cater for about 20 different currencies across more than 30 countries. We’re both legally and ethically obliged not to be misleading in our communications, and by only listing prices in, say, £ and €, we are potentially giving gamers in territories who do not use those currencies a false impression of the cost of an item.
“So we’re left with two options: either publish every currency price for every item, or ask you to click through to PlayStation Store to see an accurate local price, which is generated automatically based on your ISP’s location.
“If you were to take a typical PlayStation Store promotion featuring around 100 discounted items, the blog post would have to feature around 2,000 separate prices to be compliant. That would not only be impractical to create, but it would also make the blog post very difficult to read.
“Duly, we’ve made the difficult decision to remove pricing information and ask you to click through to PlayStation Store.”
It sounds like a reasonable move to me, one that has to be made in context of the realities and logistics of the European market.