Imported Games to be a Lot Cheaper in India
The Union Budget 2010 of India has given gamers a reason to cheer. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee presented the budget today and though the Opposition staged a noisy walkout, it gave us gamers a reason to cheer. Why? Because it appears that the excise duty on importing games has been reduced. Under customs/excise duty on import/export, this line was seen:-
Rationalisation of customs duty on gaming software.
Huzzah! But how exactly will that help gamers like you and I? Gamebashing originally reported this, noting that for those who are intent on playing a newly released game it would be really helpful (although for PC gamers, there’s always digital distribution). However, it will definitely help console gamers as each copy of the game is imported, as opposed to PC games where an Indian publisher imports the master CD. Although just how much it will help console gamers is yet to be seen:-
It needs to be seen what effect it’ll have on the price of games in retail as distributors in India too import the game CDs (for consoles) rather than importing just a master CD.
Yes, the Indian gaming scene is looking up, what with the launch of a couple of games from Indian developers for the PlayStation systems and now this.
Author: Kaushik
A mobile technology lover and a Strategy and RPG-game fanatic. I also enjoy astronomy and programming. I am a biotechnology engineer learning through this fascinating subject while poring over computer science. Hit me up on Twitter for moreTCA Lakshmi Narasimhan has written 390 articles for us.
The author of this post can be contacted at kaushik@techie-buzz.com
We moderate comments to prevent spam. Moderation is done within few hours. Please try and stay on topic and refrain from using abusive language. If you think there is a problem with this post, please email the post author or send us an email at tips@techie-buzz.com with the URL and the problem you see and we will rectify it as soon as we can.