Adam Bruno

This post originally had no picture. That’s because Chris is told me that he would find one, and as usual, he was too busy killing puppies after playing Call of Duty to mount a decent search. Now that a picture has been found, rest assured that Chris has gone back to killing puppies. Anyway, I’m back from spending some time in Israel, and I have some news that may or may not surprise you.

Always on duty (and never paid), I took some time to browse through electronics stores and was genuinely shocked at some of the prices that I saw. For example, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, which came out for the Wii over a year ago, was selling for 450 shekels. That’s nearly $100.

And it’s not just Israel that’s not crazy about video games. VG Chartz shows that the USA and Japan (and in some cases just the USA) outsells the rest of the world combined in console sales. This may be old news to some, but it’s still rather sobering.

So, what gives? Maybe it’s the economy, which certainly makes sense for countries like China and India, but what about countries like Israel, where the economy isn’t too bad? Even taking the population difference into account, a lot of Israelis that I spoke to just didn’t care too much about video games. Or maybe they just bought one system and a couple of games, a far cry from the 3+ systems that most of us over in the USA have.

Anyway, it’s food for thought, to be sure. And next time you’re thinking about complaining about the high video game prices over here, keep in mind that they could be much worse.