I was soo close to buying it, I don't remember it being that expensive; is that an exchange rate thing kicking in with special Euro-taxes?
Edit: 69.99 and 79.99 US for me for the standard and digital deluxe editions, before taxes. VAT, damn I had to google it, my brain just wouldn't remember the term, I blocked it out because [political screed]
$70 is the "new normal" for PS5 games, Droigan did say upthread he was Scandinavian, correct? Surely that is the 15% EDIT2 WTF a 25% VAT in Norway/Sweden? Fuck that. No wonder. Returnal is 849 Krona (SEK) in Sweden/859 Krone (NOK) in Norway which works out to $102+ US.
For completeness, I check the rest of what I considered "Scandinavian" VATs: Denmark is 25% as well. Closest you get in Scandinavia to relief is Finland with 22%.
On the Danish Playstation store, though, its 594 DKK which is 96.41 USD.
On the Finnish store, it's in Euros, which nets out to 79.95 € to 97.48 USD.
Interesting Trivia, which I think I knew at one time but didn't remember: Several countries here all use the Krone/Krona as their currency, they are not interchangeable, hence the Swedish Krona SEK, the Norwegian Krone NOK, the Danish Krone DKK, Iceland has their own Krona as well, ISK, hence Eve Online's currency is also known as ISK as the developers are there. Finland as seen above uses the Euro.
Please correct anything I have gotten wrong, Scandinavian folks, thanks!