Impact: Sony is going in fairly early to Latin America. In contrast, Microsoft has only announced Brazil and Mexico as launch countries for the Xbox One. Obviously Sony feels it is important to make a clear early presence in the region despite the well-known headaches. A rapidly inflating local currency can play havoc on corporate balance sheets in a scenario where the worth of foreign tender taken today can be much less a month later. Then there can be other complications regarding how much sovereign currency some governments will allow a local division of a multi-national firm to take out of a country, or convert into dollars or euros. This is a major reason why console makers stayed out of officially distributing their products in Latin America for years despite middle class growth there. Yet the move to digital distribution changed the equation. To localize online commerce means you have to localize your console network, which means having an official presence in these emerging markets. That’s good news for consumers in these countries since they now have the benefit of more secure warranties and product pipelines, and in some cases, a break on street prices compared to the old gray markets that used to supply them with consoles and games. But wildly divergent official pricing between countries in the same region becomes a marketing headache. Let’s face it, people will peg their local pricing against the dollar, and then check what the situation is in the country next door. Sony is not responsible for inflation in Argentina, yet overcoming inflationary effects to sell more PS4s is now Sony’s problem.