The Italian Video Game Industry

I am not an expert on the Italian entertainment industry (or the Italian language), so my observations can largely be taken as assumptions. However, I have been playing games for much of my life, and sold them in American retail stores for nearly five years as a teenager and young adult. Additionally, I have been writing about games in some respect for the last eight years, so I have a vast knowledge base to draw from.

From my travels, the key difference between the American and Italian gaming markets is the general availability of games. In America, every big-box retail store (Best Buy, Circuit City, Wal-Mart, Target) carries videogames, and there are over one-thousand locations of the GameStop specialty chain. I saw nothing of the sort while in Italy. We investigated several towns, small and large, and there were no media-related chain stores in sight. Aside from a large store in Rome (the only thing that convinced me that Italians actually played games), I noted only one specialty gaming store – and it was closed while the owner was on vacation.

However, videogames popped up in interesting other locations. My first sighting was in Florence, where I happened upon a music store that had a decent selection of videogames for the PlayStation 2, Nintendo DS, and Game Boy Advance. One thing I immediately noticed was how incredibly expensive everything was. A Game Boy Advance SP system was retailing for €115 ($144), while it can be had for just $80 in the United States. The snowboarding game SSX On Tour for the PlayStation 2 was priced at €65 ($81), yet it can be had for roughly $20 in the States (though it initially retailed for $40).

Later in the trip, we went to the quiet town of Lucca, which is where I found the closed gaming store. It must have been there for quite some time, as the door had a sticker on it for the original Tomb Raider game, first released in 1996. Another sticker advertised Resident Evil 4, one of the more notable games from 2005. A note on the door indicated that the store would be closed for two days beyond the day that we were in town. What would a local gamer do in such a situation? In America, if my local game store is closed, I have probably two-dozen options within a ten-mile radius. I doubt that Italian gamers have the same retail freedom that we do.

Lucca was not entirely game-free, though. A stop at the local newsstand to pick up a USA Today newspaper revealed a couple of video games for sale. Shadow the Hedgehog for the PlayStation 2 was shrink-wrapped to a backing board and placed in with the magazines, retailing for just €20 ($25), or roughly the price it sells for in America. Additionally, I saw a DVD version of Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault for the PC on a bookshelf behind the register. Sadly, I could not see a price tag on the spine, and I was not proficient enough in Italian to ask to see the item.

A section of the small town of Lucca.
We spent the first half of our trip in a hotel in the town of Montecatini Terme, which had a number of small shops within walking distance. One such shop was an electronics store of sorts that seemed to be struggling with its own identity. While part of the shop had items you might find in a Radio Shack in America, another part was selling music CDs. Right in the middle of it all was a glass display case with videogames. Additional games and accessories could be found in the front display window, viewable from the street.

Between the music shop in Florence and the electronics shop in Montecatini Terme, I realized another key difference between the American and Italian gaming markets. In America, the prices of videogames lessen significantly over time. A game that retails for $50 can usually be had for $20 a year later, and used games can be had even more cheaply. The electronics shop had Ring of Red and Swing Away Golf, two of the earliest PlayStation 2 releases, for €65 ($81) each. Neither of these games is especially rare in America, and each can be had for $10 or less, albeit used. Clearly, these games are unlikely to be sold in the near future.

The shop also had games for the original PlayStation for €40-50, further continuing the trend of overpriced, under-loved junk. Like in America, the top-selling games for the PlayStation 2 are repackaged as “Greatest Hits” and sold for a lower price after nine to twelve months of release. A major hit from last year, God of War, could be had for €30 ($38), though the same game can be purchased for $20 in the States. The PlayStation 2 console was being sold for €148 ($185), as opposed to $130 in America. However, there was an exclusive European accessory package called the “Triple Pack.” It had an extra controller, memory card, and DVD remote for the PlayStation 2 for €50 ($63). These items would cost roughly $65 (total) if purchased seperately in America, and Sony has never put out a special package like that in the States.

A stop at a monstrous store in Rome finally validated my suspicions: there are a lot of videogames available in Italy, but they’re mostly located in Rome. I didn’t get the name of the store, but it reminded me quite a bit of the American store Borders. It featured two or three floors of books, topped off with a floor full of music, movies, and videogames. Hundreds and hundreds of games were available for all systems, including the Xbox 360, which I had not seen beforehand in Italy. Brand new games were available, including some games that had not yet been released in America.

One was LocoRoco, a PlayStation Portable game that finally made it to America in early September. I was interested in the game, and could run it on my system (which I brought with me to Italy), but I got stuck on the price. At €50 ($63), I went back and forth on whether I should purchase it (especially since the exchange rate we got would have put it in the $70+ range). Thankfully, I held off, and received a free review copy of the game in September. Despite the miles we walked in Rome, this was the only gaming store I found. Maybe the sheer size of it put the smaller stores out of business, or perhaps it is only profitable to run a small gaming shop in a small town.