NEWS /
Budget 08: Games To Get Slightly More Expensive?
29 Feb, 2008, 4:56 pm IST |
Abhimanyu Radhakrishnan
|
|
The Finance Minister has thrown a bit of a googly to Indian gamers in his 2008 Budget Speech. Sample this: 151. Similarly, I propose to increase the excise duty on packaged software from 8 per cent to 12 per cent to bring it on par with customised software which will attract a service tax of 12 per cent. Now all games bought off the shelf qualify as "packaged software". However, excise duty is levied only on locally manufactured products (as against customs duty which is levied on imported stuff). Thus locally made titles including most PlayStation 2 games, will be 4% more expensive. Milestone Interactive (which prints and distributes PS2 games in India) chief, Jayant Sharma told Tech2.com that he would like to look at the fine print but admitted that the hike would be passed on to consumers since Excise is typically slapped on the final selling price. Gaming industry sources also seem divided on the definition of what constitutes 'local manufacture' of a game. For instance EA does the final mastering of many titles locally - will those prices go up? We'll update you as more industry figures study the budget and provide us their official positions The notes to the speech define packaged software as "packaged software or canned software" means a software developed to meet the needs of variety of users, and which is intended for sale or capable of being sold, off the shelf. Well, by that definition do DVDs and VCDs also qualify as "software" since they come enabled with menus that can be manipulated by the user? In the final analysis though, even though the hike is marginal, this won't do much good for an industry already swamped by piracy. |
Tags: Budget 08
Budget 08: Set Top Box Prices Unlikely To Drop
Budget 08: Rural Tech Gets Budget Boost
Budget 08: iPods, PMPs to be Cheaper
Budget 08: Cheaper Data Cards!
Leaked Images, Availability, Pricing,
Specs, Pre-order
How time flies. A few weeks ago the BlackBerry world was mad at RIM for a massive 3-day outage. Now,...

Buying Metro tickets through NFC could be a reality by 2016
14 Feb, 2012, 06:01 PM IST
A new report from Juniper Research has found that 1 in 8 (13 percent) of North American and Western European ...
After BlackBerry thumb, medics worry about iPad hand
Citrix CloudStack 3 to offer Amazon-style clouds to customers
Samsung launches three new dual-SIM smartphones, pricing revealed
Angry Birds flying to Facebook on Valentine's Day
VLC 2.0 RC build available for download, iOS version returns
Market Watch: Tablets (Feb 2012)
Tablets have been making rounds for a while now, but it wasn’t until a...
Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City Interview
We sit down and talk to producer Mike Jones who assures us that fans have...
By Avinash Bali
Top smartphones under Rs. 15,000
The 15K budget has been a sweet deal for those not wanting to spend extra...
By Karan Shah

More from this Author
Samsung launches three new dual-SIM...
How to - Multi-boot Android OS' on...
After BlackBerry thumb, medics worry about
iPad 3 to be announced on March 7, cites...
The Darkness II - Fear of the Dark
Resistance: Burning Skies dated



















Mixx
Facebook
Twitter
Digg
delicious
reddit
MySpace
StumbleUpon
LinkedIn






























































_011517074205_160x90.jpg)


















