Another discovery :
The price difference with de “PC Gamepass” is actually +25% in Switzerland, note that’s still better than ~+27% 
.
By the way, 20 years later, still not any local support (adress/phone) in Switzerland from Xbox Games.
Is there any other country with that difference or Switzerland is still N°1 cash cow ?
I just checked on the price of Ratchet and Clank as an example for the latest AAA game, and it is also 75 CHF. Salaries in Switzerland are insanely high, of course that means that prices also adjust to that.
You guys can say what you want, but AoE4 is definitely a AAA game developed by a huge studio + publisher and it was always obvious that it would be priced as such. From what I read in this thread, the prices in other countries also seem to reflect the normal price of a new AAA game. I really don’t understand the outrage here.
It’s way higher than the suggested Steam prizes and I completely understand it. Especially the Deluxe seems heavily overpriced for what it adds. You know, if the Standard Edition had been like 60 CHF and the Deluxe 75 CHF, but for the content it adds, it seems really rather on the expensive side. The sole reason I could justify preordering AOE4 right now is the free (overpriced again) AOE2 DLC I anyway want which I would get for free.
Hi AOE community! I am Franco from Argentina.
Firstly i wanna say sorry if my English is not good, i am from a Spanish country.
I was born in 2000s, i started playing aoe 2 since i was five years old and i never quit it. I am a casual player focused on campaign and entertainment, love to spent time doing stuff with bots.
So here i wanna say something about steam price, at least in my country. As we all may know, Argentina is suffering a huge economical crisis, leaving us to devalue our coin “peso”. Nowadays 1 dollar is like $100 pesos.
Recent government restrictions made buying something in dollars little hard cause it has added taxes. These taxes are:
-“Impuesto a la ganancia - RG AFIP N4815/2020” - 35%
-“Impuesto pais - RG AFIP N 4659/2020” - 8%
-“IVA servicio digital - RG AFIP N 4240*2018” - 21%
These make a total of 64% of the total value of the game. Now AOE 4 is $3000 pesos, with added taxes it would be $4920 pesos, in case you did not notice, that is a lot and i will try to explain.
In Argentina minimum salary is $24.408,00. The game with added taxes is $4920, that will be a 20% of an actual salary! Completely insane!
I compared it to USA where you have 1160 dollars as minimum salary and the game is 60 dollars. That is a 5% of minimum salary.
To conclude, i know the game is still “cheap” compared to USA price, but you have to evaluate in the economical context where you are trying to sell it, cheap or not is still a lot for ARG. If there are no taxes that could be a decent price. And please, if someone notices i am doing the analysis wrong please correct me as polite as you can.
I write these not to change the AOE 4 price to 100 pesos, but maybe a little if you understand the problem we are living here.
Thanks in advance,
Franco.
I’ve seen the Argentinian prize and compared to what is suggested as fair prize by Steam and I must say, it’s completely insane to ask this much.
I did compare the price to Resident Evil Village 80 Euros/80 Dollars
Resident Evil Village In Argentine Peso ARS$ 3499,00
AoE4 in Argentine Peso ARS$ 3999,99
https://steamdb.info/app/1196590/
https://steamdb.info/sub/587468/
the 60 Euros / 60 Dollars version
Resident Evil Village in Argentine Peso ARS$ 2499,00
AoE4 in Argentine Peso ARS$ 2999,99
https://steamdb.info/sub/412314/
https://steamdb.info/app/1466860/
And i would say, that game is also overpriced… Almost every person in ARG is not willing to pay that price + 64%. This is a problem poor countries have.
I got nothing against you @Kriegsbote or other people on this topic, we’re all defending our interests.
We’re talking about dematerialized software, not about video game packaging anymore. In the past, they could “justify” with the transportation cost, retail distribution cost, special logistics, etc… Nowadays, no more video game packaging, no local support (phone, address), no retail distribution cost, no specific language support, almost no consumer rights if there is a litigation,etc…
If you buy a pen on MischkovBay or Mischkovmazon, and the base price is 5$. The base price (5$) is the same whether you live in Switzerland, China, Russia or in Antarctic (ofc specific countries’ taxes would apply + exchange fees + shipping fees, especially for Antartic 
).
Do you know why they introduced regional pricing ? It was just because lowering the price + a regional restriction allowed them to make more profit. Editors supplied way more copies, becoming more benefit because despite a lowered price they had much more customers. People with little purchasing power got access to a game they could not afford before. Everybody was happy.
But doing the opposite is really a weird strategy move with such an obvious difference. I feel really sad. On the ratio [number of copies sold/number of inhabitants] for each country, Switzerland is maybe the top #1, because Switzerland is actually #14 on the number of active players (1 game last 28 days) and I don’t see a better ratio on the top 15 others countries. I think that just dev can see actually the number of copies sold by country.
Just look at Twitch, they recently introduced the regional pricing +33% in Switzerland. It’s so obvious that I think that despite the +33% they will have a serious drop in profit in Switzerland at the end of this year. People don’t spend time to read the lines “we did that to adapt to the cost of life” they just see the price difference when it’s so obvious.
You know usually people don’t like being taken for a cash cow… It will backfire, just a matter of time now.
I was wrong, the “PC Gamepass” is actually ~+33% in Switzerland 
To give a perspective: The monthly median income in Switzerland is 6500 CHF. Considering that, a game for 75 CHF is still really cheap compared to nearly every other country in this world.
Considering other lower income countries: The cost of a game does not come from distribution (as it´s mainly online). But, Microsoft still has to pay its employees and the developers. As they mainly live in the US they also need a US salary.
The AoE Definitive Editions were generally priced (too) low in comparison to other games. The reason for that was to get players back to Age of Empires and especially into the Game Pass. Now Microsoft needs to charge a higher price for AoE4 to actually profit from that.
Keep in mind that this is the launch price. If nobody is able to afford the game prices go down over time. The people that want to play day 1 or even pre-order obviously have to pay a higher price.
Capcom also don’t care much about regional prices. But if you look at Microsoft games that are already released like forza horizon 4, it’s always same or closed to steams suggested prices. I believe Microsoft increased prices just to sell gamepass which is the best service but still I think they need to lower prices. Because when people like the game, they will buy anyway even its in gamepass because of dlc or goodies. But with high prices nope.
I’m from Turkey and it is very overpriced for me too. Forza Horizon 4 is 92 TL(10usd) for me while preordering Age of Empires 4 is 299 TL(35usd) .
But i’m not gonna lie considered to other publishers it is somewhat acceptable because Mass Effect Legendary edition or preordering Battlefield 2042 is 419,99 TL (49,16). Which is far beyond our budget. Minimum wage in Turkey is 2800 TL.
Can Microsoft take a stance regarding this so we can anticipate. If regional prices won’t be fixed I think many people won’t buy the game and stick to AoE2 and 3.
I really want pre order AoE4, but at this price, me and many others wont buy it. I Will stay with my old Aoe games and my TW titles.
Buy the game asap is important, because if we dont, The game could flop and die and i dont want that. I really like aoe.
I wouldn’t expect the game to be cheaper than 150 reais on Steam.
Tier A ( S ) games usually have 50+ euro price. For example the new Civilization 6 has 60 euro. RTS games is a harder game type to be made than a turn base strategy. So, the price is logical. Plus they give the new AOE 2 DE dlc free which is an extra bonus.
The region overprices is something different. For sure the price will not be for all regions equal to 60 euros. The price scales up or down with the country taxes + the coin power of each country. The price will take into consideration the exchange price of each coin. This will rise the price for countries with low power coins. ( I don’t know if there are overprice values if you compare each region price with the exchange value the coin has. There might be problems which logically will be fixed ).
I know, this is a pure mathematic view of the problem. I guess in second time the devs might consider to give better sales offers to countries with worse economy than others, but this will happen in second time I suspect.
I think M$ want to push their Game Pass
So they just Overpriced AOE4 and hope player think about that way to get the game
It’s a bit tough for poorer eurozone countries too - we’re expected to have as much purchasing power as Dutch and German people when our average wage is like 3 times smaller than an Austrian wage. Very disappointing.
I am Dutch and I also think it is too expensive, whoops! 
Perhaps we got spoilt with all these €20 games in the franchise haha
