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Oh
Canada.....
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Sega Web recently put an article
that Sega of America is having problems
with the Canada and its government. It
says the main reason for the troubles
goes way back to the Genesis and Sega CD
days. It seems SOA didn't pay the
Canadian taxes, and government still
wants the money. I don't blame SOA, I
live in Canada, and the taxes are
incredibly high. Unlike the U.S. taxes,
where it is considerably less. But again,
Canada does have free health care.
Back to the problem, SOA has
nearly 1/2 million dollars in unpaid
taxes (GST). This might force SOA to sell
the Dreamcast and first-party products by
a Canadian distributor like Beamscope.
But, these distributors have their own
fees, meaning SOA will lose money selling
first-party products.
Sega has sold 1.75 million DC
units so far in North America since the
launch. Out of that, 10% was sold in
Canada. That's 175,000 DC's sold in
Canada if my math is right. Doesn't sound
like much comparing to the U.S., but
think about this, Canada has a population
of 27 million, while the U.S. has a
population of over 250 million. See my
point?
It gets worse, since Canada has
a large population of french speaking
people, it forces companies to make
manuals in french. The Quebec province is
98% french speaking, and because Nintendo
and Sony didn't provide the french
manuals, they're being sued by the
government. At the moment, Sega's not
involved in this, but because of the
popularity of DC, it could change. So why
doesn't Sega make French manuals? Its all
because of the money, Sega could lose a
lot of money making extra french manuals
for games, DC, peripherals, etc.
Its rumored that SOA might stop
selling DC's in Quebec so they don't get
involved in the same problems Nintendo
and Sony had. But then again, there are a
lot of french speaking people outside of
Quebec, mainly in Ontario. Its unlikely that
SOA will drop out of Canada, because it
is a large market, comparing to the
population. If SOA does drop out? Well, I
will be pissed, because in Canada, if I
go to my local EB store, I can save $5 on
a game. For example, Virtua Fighter 3TB
is $30 American. $1.5 Canadian dollars
equal to one U.S. dollar. Multilpling 30
by 1.5 gives $45, but at EB, I can get
the game for $40! This goes for most of
the games being released, with exception
to games like Legacy of Kain, Soul
Calibur, and some other games.
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