A gaming blog is claiming that Canadian gamers are getting ripped off in comparsion to other regions when it comes to donlowdable content from Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony. Despite their being no real extra layer of costs in supplying downloadable content to Canada, it would seem as if gaming firms feel the need to add on an extra chunk of profit for each item.

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Microsoft is certainly not the only guilty party in this situation. Sony regularly charges $1 more on digital downloads than the US price. So far this has been on small-ticket items such as Super Stardust HD or Calling All Cars, which were $8 and $10 US items (respectively) that ended up being $9 and $11 CDN. Incidentally, Sony is the only console maker using actual money values rather than some stupid point system, so it’s a little easier to see the difference. And it always seems to be exactly $1 more in CDN so far, no matter what the actual price… which is why we’re really curious to see what the price of the $40 US Warhawk turns into up here.

There is absolutely no good reason for any sort of disparity whatsoever. There are no import taxes on digital downloads. There is no additional heavy lifting required by Microsoft, Nintendo or Sony to make the content available in Canada as opposed to the U.S. Exchange rates could in fact be plugged directly into the online storefronts in realtime, up-converting whatever points you bought to the current rates – even retail MSP card purchases would not have to be a ripoff after the fact. This is trivial stuff.

So why the difference? Occam’s razor: because they can.