I see your point Puffyshirt but I haven't read anything anywhere yet to say that retailers are paying more to publishers. I don't believe that in the current state of the industry, publishers would ask for more money for their products.
The game industry is essentially American. They expect to get paid in American dollars.
In America, retail supposedly gets around $10 per-game. The publisher basically gets the rest. When games were $50, retail got $10 and the publishers got $40. Then when we moved to HD and prices pushed up to $60, retail got $10 and publishers got $50 (because retail has nothing to do with HD, they just want their ten bucks).
Canadian retail can ask for ten
Canadian dollars, because they pay their people in Canadian dollars, so variations in the dollar don't effect
them all that much, but they're still buying American products to sell, and at the end of the day, the American video game industry is not going to accept the Canadian dollar at par. We've
always paid more for our videogames, and it was only when our dollar climbed to par that it ended.
If Canadian Tire wants wants to buy the latest $60 game to resell, they're going to have to pay $50 American for it. That currently means $55 Canadian. If they try to sell it on their shelves for $60 Canadian, then they're only making $5, rather than the $10 they would like to get. They've pushed it up to $70 Canadian because they're making up for lost time (our dollar has been sub-par for some time now), and they probably expect it to keep dropping. We're currently overpaying by about five bucks, but for five bucks, most people won't bother importing their games from America.
Honestly, I'm surprised we were able to get games at par for as long as we did. It's kind of a rule in business than says that you should immediately raise the price as soon as something changes to tell you that you should, but when it changes the other way, you're supposed to stall and drag your heels, and buy some time while you rake in "accidental" profits.
