I would be interested to know this myself. Some insight into the $->£ 1:1 conversion would be nice.
I'm not saying there isn't a justification here, it's just I've never heard of one. There may not be one as we all know that price is often best set at what the market will bear, and someone probably decided that it was a good price point for the UK market.
I'm not sure the business rates. According to what I can find, as an individual, I could buy one of these from the US and only be liable for the 20% VAT I've already accounted for, as the electronics->consoles category seems to be exempt from any duty.
I'm not sure if this is true for businesses, finding that info seems to be non-trivial.
--edit-- So far as I can tell (from gov.uk)
"The commodity code for importing is 9504500000.
Importing from outside the EU is subject to a third country duty of 0.00 %."
Heh, and I'm sure we could swallow some or all of the rest of it in postal costs in general, were I to order one for personal import from the US.
BUT if we're examining the £99 price point, I'd assume there would be economies of scale for the importer that's shipping to (for instance) amazon.co.uk, in terms of US->UK shipping. And that's if it is all shipped from the US to the UK, rather than coming from the Chinese manufacturer via the Hong-Kong distributor straight to Britain, in which case the costs should be comparable.
I probably couldn't personally import one from the US for much cheaper than the UK price, but that doesn't mean I can't still feel a bit miffed!
I'm not saying there isn't a justification here, it's just I've never heard of one. There may not be one as we all know that price is often best set at what the market will bear, and someone probably decided that it was a good price point for the UK market.