Curious about the reasons for the price difference of Gems in STO and Castle Empire.

I must admit that I have considered buying a few gems, however I found the prices to be shall we say… a bit steep. I checked out the prices of Gems in Castle Empire and found them to be the numerically the same even if the currency was a weaker one. Add to that Castle Empire has super deals. So not only are STO players getting ripped off by a 1-1 exchange rate from USD to Euro, they don’t get the really nice deals which give literally thousands of gems extra to Castle Empire players.

I know Bluebyte and Ubisoft are all about the money but this is a ridiculous. The easy answer will ofc be that Ubisoft can’t be hassled with daily exchange rates, I for one find such an answer unsatisfactory. I truly enjoy this game and wouldn’t mind throwing a few euros after it, but I sure in hell wont do it if I know that I can get a better deal for exactly the same product elsewhere.

I can’t expect people to check this for themselves due to the IP blocker on Castle Empire so I’ll reproduce the castle empire and STO price lists below. Keep in mind that the exchange rate at the time of writing is 1 USD = 0.757450 EUR

Prices on Castle Empire gems:

200 Gems = $1.99
600 Gems = $4.99
1700 Gems = $9.99
4800 Gems= $24.99
11000 Gems= $49.99
24000 Gems= $79.99 (Sale: Reg $99.99)
24000 Gems =$99.99
48000 Gems =$99.99 (Mega Happy Hour)

Prices on STO
200 Gems = €1.99
600 Gems = €4.99
1700 Gems = €9.99
4800 Gems= €24.99
11000 Gems= €49.99
24000 Gems =€99.99

To sum up in you play castle empire you get as a minimum 25% more gems for you money, and if you buy the Mega Happy Hour offer you get more than 200% the amount of gems you’d get on STO. If there’s a good reason for these price differences I can’t help but wonder what it is, does anyone know… or is it just pure greed?

"pure greed"? seems pretty close.

I would never pay for gems to play this game, they are terrible value for money even with special offers. How it is justified I can only imagine.

I'm sure the sales calculations have been done to tested formulas and projections look rosy, but for a game that isn't complete the prices certainly are.

How about 50%+ discount while this is still BETA? Offering a better value chance for players to invest in gems would help show the community how advantageous it could be and encourage sales.

Keep them expensive and they will only ever be for those who can afford the prices who feel they need an advantage to succeed.

I think I'll save my money for something real, sorry Mr Big Gaming Corporation. Prices for both games are a little steep imo regardless of which one seems better value. Seems like a case of setting prices at a maximum that people would pay.

I'd rather have a mug or a T-shirt for my money, or actually buy a CD offline version of Settlers and have a complete game without bugs and rules.

I'll plod on though and see what's in store in the near future. This game deserves a chance, just not my money, yet.

Even in Castle Empires the gems are ludicrously expensive - even with a cut of upwards of 50% i would still be very unlikely to buy gems on a regular basis. You could easily spend the equivalent of a whole years worth of subscription fees and purchase prices for other premium online games in a couple of months on gems and not have a great deal to show for it. Given the game, while admittedly good fun, has extremely limited player interactivity i can't see why anyone would actually want to buy gems at all.

I probably didn't stress my agreement with both badtrev and nerb that the gem prices on both Castle Empire, as well as TSO are too high (especially for a beta). The relatively high price of gems will definitely discourage a fair amount of players from purchasing gems, and I think that nerb makes a good point regarding why a beta discount should be considered. While agreeing with both, my curiosity is mostly on the rather large (25% plus) difference in value for money between the two site (due to currency difference).

The purchasing power in USD of American's is lower than for most european's, so it's logical that they ask less per gem from them.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dilbe

The purchasing power in USD of American's is lower than for most european's, so it's logical that they ask less per gem from them.

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Average earnings in America are higher than almost everywere in EU (GDP per head of population) and certainly much higher than than EU average - the gap has closed a lot over the last few years but with the lower cost of goods and services the greater purchasing power still, on the whole, resides in America.

glad someone bring up this topic

I do agree, if I convert my currency over euro, I'll receive half the amount I would get from usd

on the other case I can play on US server, but unfortunately community over there is so mess up, I never see mod talking (managing global chat), people spamming trading all the time, help, others are just in 1 place.

but then again, eventough we all knew it, there's always someone would buy it anyway, and I know few people who would buy it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dilbe

The purchasing power in USD of American's is lower than for most european's, so it's logical that they ask less per gem from them.

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I guess we'll have to disagree on that Dilbe. In 2007, average gross domestic product (GDP) in the US is about 40% higher than average GDP of the EU-15 when measured at purchasing power parity (PPP). If we use the Big Mac index (I love that name... and yes I find it rather stupid measure since it presupposes a basket of good consisting of 1 Big Mac) then one can argue that BB should be charging EU players 21% more than US players... which again means that they are only overcharging by 4 percentage points. Yet another claim we could make is that mean equivalized disposable household income is what we should be considering, here we can reach the conclusion that US player have more money to spend on Gems than Europeans.

To be honest, I like simple things... you know charts and graphical things. So if we take a look at what wikipedia claims to be a representation of the IMF number for GDP PPP per capita in 2009 we quickly see that only a handful of European countries are in the top category with the US.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...a_2007_IMF.png

In short, I disagree that Purchasing Power is a good reason for EU prices to be higher than US prices... rather they should be lower. But granted Europeans are in general used to paying higher prices for gaming entertainment than Americans, but purchasing power has nothing to do with it (in my opinion).

I stand corrected. It seems i did not read enough on the wikipedia artical(s). In my own language they only had the 2003 graph, and it seems there has been a large change since then.

For those of you not in the real world - the actual financial facts are that when things move from the US to here, normally the only thing that changes is the currency symbol changes - from $ to £ in the UK and that funny squiggle in euros.

Forget all your economic theories, that's a fact of life. The only other difference is when they do convert, they do it wrongly - e.g. $100 becomes £150, not £70ish pounds - Apple do it all the time.

The final thing is remember no US price ever includes purchase tax, where prices in the UK (and prob in the EU as well) have to include the eurotax (VAT)

Some of us don't live in rip off Britain for nothing you know

Unlucky, I have to concede that I had forgotten about Value Added Tax. Which as you rightly point out is not paid in the US. Last I checked the EU-Vat rate was a minimum of 15% (which ofc means it can be higher on gem services - not sure what category they fall under). They still vary from country to country, but not much to be done about that. This still leave a Eu residents with a relatively higher cost of gems (but not as high as claimed in my original post), but until BB explains their EU-US gem pricing policy we can guess all we want. I sincerely doubt they will ever explain it and to be honest I think they are just doing what everybody else is going (and getting away with) in using the $1=€1 conversion.