PES 2010 Sold 600,000 Copies in Growing Latin America SW Market

by Jacob Mazel, posted on 15 July 2010 / 2,955 Views

According to a Jogos.uol report out of Brazil, Konami's PES 2010 sold a rather remarkable 600,000 units in Latin America. Over 40% of the sales - 252,000 units - came from Brazil - a country usually hampered by exceptionally high costs for new video games due to excessive taxation. The article states that most games that are reviewed well only sell 8,000 - 10,000 units (i.e. not pirated or via gray market) in Brazil because the titles cost over $113. However, due to a special arrangement, PES 2010 sold over 250,000 units in Brazil because the game cost only $53 ($33 on PS2). After observing these results, retailers in Brazil have begun petitioning their government to lower taxes on video games to allow the market to flourish without piracy. Sony's God of War III has apparently sold 30,000 units in Brazil as well.

In Mexico, taxes have already been reduced a fair amount on video games. As a result, the Mexican video game industry (although it may be Mexican videogame software - Google Translate is a bit unclear) is now 2% of the world market, while Brazil is only 0.5% of the world market. Since Brazil is a more populous country than Mexico, Jogos argues that with lower taxes, Brazil could become a much larger video game market than Mexico. A retail source in the piece is quoted as saying that with software prices at even $100, the 'official' software market would grow five to ten fold, resulting in titles routinely selling 100,000 units. Given that Mexico is already roughly a billion dollar video game market, the prospects of gaming in Latin America are fairly promising for publishers if prices for software drop. With a break even point of say, 500,000 for a major project, the ability to sell 100,000 - 200,000 units in Latin America would be a godsend to major publishers as costs continue to rise for games - so here is hoping that the excessive taxes on video games in Brazil and across Latin America fall in the coming years.

Edit: Had used American dollars - Jogos was using Brazillian Real (the local currency). Cost is fixed now and listed in American dollars for readers to avoid confusion.

Contact VGChartz at jmazel@vgchartz.com


17 Comments

Kai Master
Kai Master (on 17 July 2010)

Onibaka : thanks, interesting, since it's been 1 year on the market now do you know some sales figure of the Zeebo?

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Soonerman
Soonerman (on 16 July 2010)

Mexico is pretty big when it comes to videogames. The problem is that the systems and games tend to cost higher than the US, but a lot of people buy videogames when the come visit or through pirate markets.

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Paperdiego
Paperdiego (on 16 July 2010)

not much i can say about south america but i know in mexico, the game industry has been growing rather rapidly with the Xbox being a dominate force in the country.

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Farmageddon
Farmageddon (on 16 July 2010)

You know what I don't get, why won't the big publishers just print cds here on Mercosul for this market? It would get rid of the ridiculous taxes, it wouldn't be an import in the same sense, and it'd be cheap as well. Also, since the media is so cheap, they could actually charge a little less dollars for unit. Would do wonders to reduce piracy and help grow a big industry long-term wise. I mean, what's the point of having region lock if you won't really differentiate prices anyway?

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Onibaka
Onibaka (on 16 July 2010)

I always import my games from Shopto(i'm brazilian). I never bought a game here, but i can assure that the BR market is BIG. I think that there are MILLIONS PS2 right now. @Kai Master Zeebo says Hello. >.< http://noreset.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/zeebo-21.jpg

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kopstudent89
kopstudent89 (on 16 July 2010)

PES over Fifa... thats kinda sad

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Kai Master
Kai Master (on 16 July 2010)

If they want to protect domestic production of VGs then they should develop VGs in their country, but I've never heard of Brazilian or Mexican VGs... I'm sure one day Mexico and Brazil would be huge markets, and we'll start seeing far more games in Spanish or Portuguese. Ah, if only French had this huge demographic, we wouldn't wait months after Japan and US to get only a few of the games into French, damn, French people : do babies!

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menx64
menx64 (on 16 July 2010)

No this gen in my opinion... In latinamerica (I am from Costarica) for everygame we have to pay about $100, with no chance for price drops ever... I guess online distribuition is the only way for us to get fair prices...

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Dark Odin
Dark Odin (on 15 July 2010)

I posted that in the forum: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=34302&page=15 I was shocked with the numbers too. but just thinking about my ps3 friends list... everybody who bought PES, bought here in some local market or internet and not imported by ebay/shopto/etc as usual because of the good price. me included! kind a dream, to have RPGs games in portuguese in PS3 someday... well... PS4 who knows.

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HabinoBR
HabinoBR (on 15 July 2010)

"...Brazil - a country usually hampered by exceptionally high costs for new video games due to excessive taxation." And totally agree with Monteblanco. That is the sad true for us, brazillian players. Im from Brazil and i can say that unfortunally, the high prices is that leads to the piracy. If the taxes wasnt so high and the games were sold at a real price, probably the profit earned on the sells would b way bigger.

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Barozi
Barozi (on 15 July 2010)

meh they should have bought more PES 4-6 copies instead.

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DarkLantis
DarkLantis (on 15 July 2010)

Monteblanco is right in most of the parts he said, but the real reason that videogames are highpriced here is because they are imported eletronic products. The goverment has an stupid incentive law for eletronic products that are produced inside national territory, so, imported products have extremly high taxes. The computers are inside a special category and they don't apply those taxes on it because they want to incentive the digital inclusion inside the country. You know, back in the time of the SNES, almost everybody had a videogame. And that's because Nintendo and Sega had subsidied factorys here. But as software was produced outside Brazil (and everyone knows the profit is inside the software department) they abandoned the country in PS1 times and here we are, living in a pirate land!

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Monteblanco
Monteblanco (on 15 July 2010)

I am Brazilian and I buy most of my games at e-bay or when traveling abroad as the official products are too expensive. Konami released PES at a reduced price, in par with PC games in Brazil, about US$50.00. This is a strong evidence suggesting piracy can be fought with fair prices. I hope this will put our representative in the congress in action, as they are siting over a bill to reduce taxes for years. However, considering there are general elections to the Congress at October, I think the chances are slim. Videogames -- both software and hardware -- are classified as toys under Brazilian fiscal service. To avoid the market to be flooded with cheaply made Chinese toys, these products are taxed exorbitantly. If I recall correct, the proposal is to move videogames to the same category of computers.

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elmerion
elmerion (on 15 July 2010)

This is so not going to happen

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iWarMachine
iWarMachine (on 15 July 2010)

in Argentina, the games costs $500 (more than $100USD)...it's pretty harsh to continue gaming with those prices....thank god there's the gray market.

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binary solo
binary solo (on 15 July 2010)

Are taxes on video games higher (as a % of the pre-tax retail price) than taxes on other entertainment products (DVDs, CDs, etc)? If not then why should video games get a special tax exemption. If so then there certainly seems to be just and proper reason for demanding the tax be brought to the same % as other goods.

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DarkLantis
DarkLantis (on 15 July 2010)

i really pray for these taxes reductions because it's impossible to buy games at this price here in brazil...

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