It was revealed well over a year ago that Australian pricing had been made available for developers in Steam, but they finally announced today at the Game Connect Asia Pacific Conference (taking place in Melbourne) that customer facing support for Australian dollars will arrive mid November.
As stated in September last year, developers have been able to select Australian Dollars as a currency but this would be converted to US dollars in the customer facing storefront of Steam.
It’s definitely going to change how Australian gamers purchase games on Steam in terms of having a much easier way to see how much they’re spending.
Source: Press-Start Australia
My opinion is that games will be more expensive after you factor in currency conversion + tax, etc..
I think it will be lower prices for the most part with only a few rare ones going up by a little bit here and there.
Several games that I looked up (mixture of 2016, early 2018 and last week) and compared with steams NZ prices. The 2016 and early 2018 games where ~21% cheaper. The one released last week was 9% dearer then buying it in USD.
In our advantage over NZ is our exchange rate to the US is better and less sales tax needing to be collected 10% instead of 15%.
But in the end comes down to publisher greed as they set the prices.
We pretty much share the same game publishers as NZ so there isn't really any excuse for them to charge us more then someone in NZ.
If they do charge more tehn it would cost in USD boycott the game until it goes on sale during one of Steams seasonally sales or buy it elsewhere. Eg humble bundle store.
Any on sale Steam currency cards will now sell like cookies. :)