Given how the quality of new releases and zero new games being worth the price, I have not bought a new release in over 10 years, maybe 12 years. I can’t justify the price vs. what companies have been putting out.
Hasn’t changed a bit. I NEVER buy games new with maybe two exceptions being Fallout and Metal Gear, but even then I found good deals on them so I still didn’t pay full price. Every single game that looks like I might want it goes on my isthereanydeal waitlist and I don’t buy it until it’s at least 50% off.
For the last few years it has been in < 5€ / month territory for me.
This is due to many AAA games not doing it for me in the first place and others being broken and unccompleted at release. And then I just wait a few years and pick them up in a sale - and it works out great every time.
Case and point - Cyberpunk. I still haven’t bought it but I hear its actually good now. I’ll wait a bit still until they CDPR really finished it.
MONTHLY spending?! If you’re having to budget for monthly video game spending, you and I are very different. Do they have you on the hook with micro transactions or something?
There are very few games I’ve bought at full price. Baldur’s Gate 3. Elden Ring. Dark Souls 2 and 3. Those were all worth it. Most things I’ll just wait for a sale. My friends don’t really play a lot of games, and rarely all want to play the same thing, so I don’t have that peer pressure problem.
I can’t even think of anything that exciting coming out soon.
I spend less than before. I used to not buy keys from third party stores, but now I do. I always bought on release, full prices, but now I don’t care any longer if they get my money. The few indie devs that care, sell for less and with less greedy tactics, they get the full money on release or early access.
Everything from Ubisoft/EA/Blizzard is pirated because they deserve no money anymore, they are shit companies that should go bankruptcy.
And even for the few I bought, I might go gamepass now. I regret that I bought a key for Starfield and Cities Skylines 2, should’ve not trusted them. I’ll not pay for their next games/dlcs as I first have to get my money back I spend on them.
I also started to give way more negative press to friends and online, now that games got more expensive I expect better quality. It’s an easy deal.
I just realized that I have bought 2 games at full price in the past decade., Elite Dangergous, and BG3. I did back Wasteland 2 on Kickstarter in late 2013, but I think it was like $20.
I wouldn’t say it has. I don’t buy too much these days anyways as I already have a backlog, and there’s so much out there that I tend to buy things on sale that have been out for a while.
I’m willing to buy a higher-priced game or DLC on release, but it better be damned good. I’ll wait a bit before buying to at least ensure that it’s playable on day one.
The only thing that this harms for me is multiplayer experiences. It means that only people willing to pay that high price during economic hardship will be able to play multiplayer stuff that isn’t 2-4 years old. Imagine spending $70 on call of duty. Nope you say. I can wait you say. So you do wait until next year and it’s on sale for $45. You bite the bullet. And guess what? Now you get to come home and play a game that has players who have been playing for a year. Or hackers. On a game without content updates. It’s an awful experience and I’m happy there are plenty of games not asking that full price.
Of which only Warhammer and BG3 were bought on launch, are the only games I’ve bought since 2016. So roughly 1 game per year, and mostly on discount. Launch price could be 200 USD for all I care, I don’t have time for trying out new games all the time.
There are so many old classics to be played, and too many mtx ridden, unoptimised Unreal Engine AAA games being published for new games to be enticing.
Other than they ongoing payments for games I continue to play (hello, World of Warcraft), most of my money now goes toward games from smaller studios that aren’t so expensive. Valheim, Timberborn, and many others are well below $70, and now I get to try games from other creators while still affording the couple of big spenders I enjoy.
I dipped out when games jumped to $60 CAD sometime back in the XBox 360 era iirc. (For context, games are $80-90 CAD now.) Since then, I’ve bought maybe 4 or 5 AAA games total.
That era was also when indie games exploded onto the scene. These indie games were/are better than most AAA titles, and way more affordable, so it just made sense to pivot.
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