How and when do you go about buying your games?

[Nik Drou]

Right now, I would love to be the owner of Uncharted 3, Arkham City and Infamous 2, to name but three.  The latter, at least, is finally approaching the kind of price range that allows for a less anxious purchase (£10-£20).  The other two are both still stuck around £30-£40, but I know that given their AAA status, and barring some catastrophic misjudgement on the part of whoever decides how many copies of a thing there should be, they'll most likely suffer an agonisingly slow descent in price.  As a result, I have reduced myself to concocting rationalisations while loitering in town, waiting for that Sainsbury's chipotle chicken to be marked down a second time: 

I'm on a tight budget.  I have that book on the Cyprus problem to finish reading, not to mention that massive one about North Korea.  There's literally a pile of Yasujiro Ozu blu-rays by the telly.  I haven't updated my blog in a while.  I need to find a job very urgently.  I already have Uncharted 2 and Arkham Asylum.  These things are rather overpriced and overexposed within the industry.  I should buy something more obscure and a lot less fun, like From Dust.  I should be giving these old CDs to Oxfam or an equally worthy charity, instead of trading them in for a few measly pennies worth of store credit.  I should really be boycotting DC products anyway, for their tendency towards both latent and outright sexism.  These games merely act as aggressive totems for shop-worn genre troping, exacerbating visceral platitudes in lieu of more worthy expression and contributing to the grinding cultural malaise that's slowly eating us alive and burning our prospects. 

I really, really want to glide around and punch criminals. 

It's only like a £10 difference anyway.  That's only about the cost of a Romana Padana at Pizza Express.  Plus I could lose my vouchers in the wash or something.  Arkham City's a British production, so it would be supporting the economy.  If I wait too long it could get spoiled by someone online.  I already know that bloody

Spoiler alert

Mad Hatter

[close]

's in it, that would have been a nice surprise.  It would improve my hand/eye co-ordination.  It would save me cash in the long run, as I'd be less inclined to head outdoor and eat a Romana Padana in front of friends.  Using this exact same logic, it will also help keep me in shape.  Knowing the ins and outs of these games would help when networking amongst Movember-addled media youths with offensively large salaries.  It could come up on Only Connect in some capacity.  It could!

Are you the type to just buy a game on release for £40-£50 without all this faffing around?  You decadent bastards!  How do you live with yourselves?  Also, how do you strangle that inner whimper when you pass by a CeX a few months later and see the thing on sale for less than half the price, eh?  How do you live with the shame?

[ThickAndCreamy]

As I don't own a console I pretty much solely buy games from Steam now. I wait for sales, and then, and only then, do I download. There isn't a single game on my PC I haven't bought in a Steam sale currently.

When I did own a console I would usually wait over 6 months to buy a game, then sell it straight after completion. It usually cost me nothing in total, or a small loss or profit, thanks to spending hours waiting for a bargain on ebay.

[Consignia]

Because I import a lot of games there's usually a whopping great import duty smacked on them and there's very little to be saved by waiting, other than the hope of a budget version. Therefore, I usually pre order them and if I'm lucky, get the first press bonuses. Any games in this country though, unless they are released at a decent price, I just wait until they come into my threshold. I'm not really on a budget but I am loathed to spend more than £30 on any locally released game.

[glitch]

I preorder most games but then that's because I'm only really playing multiplayer these days and you have to be quick to get in the post-release zergrush before another game comes out and steals the playerbase.

[mobias]

I was in the same boat re Uncharted 3 but I was torn between it and Skyrim. Games are expensive and I'm slightly of the opinion that linear games like Uncharted don't really give you a lot of game for money in terms of replay-ability, unless of course you're keen on the multiplayer aspect of them. But once you've played a game like Uncharted all the way through its then a case of now what? Wait a year until you've forgotten most of it and then play it again? Or do you trade it in. I'm pretty bad for trading games in usually because I will only buy the games i know are supposed to be utterly amazing and that I'll really really like and because of that I generally don't want to part with them.

Anyway Uncharted 3 is utterly superb, it definitely takes the best bits of Uncharted 2 and builds on them. As I say though once its over, and I'll probably finish it this weekend, then its well and truly over. U2's multiplayer did nothing for me but I might dabble in U3's if it has co-op.

Skyrim will definitely come out of next month's paypacket. I love open world games because they give you an awful lot of game for your money.   

 

[wasp_f15ting]

I don't think anyone with any kind of sanity goes around buying 5 x 40 games on a whim because they look cool. There are better things to spend your money on.

I really like Gamestations +£1 thing on trade ins. So I have a bunch of games from 2009-10 which I part completed or couldn't be arsed completing.. like lego star wars on the PS3 (dunno why I even got that) anyhoo got a price of £7.00 from the CEX website, printed it off went to gamestation and traded that plus several other games and got £80 store credit this got me dark souls rage and some money towards drake. (you get money for trading in too with their loyalty scheme)

I completed drake in one night 10hrs or so.. took it in the following day and got £36.00 store credit from gamestation, which then let me buy Skyrim. As long as you can spot a deal online, buy the game online trade it in store and you'll get the same money as what you paid online. There are some games with extended value which I know I can't trade in like, skyrim and Arkham, so I am forgoing Assasins Creed, Modern Warfare 3 and Zelda, these are games which I am not bothered about because I haven't completed AC2 or Brotherhood, MW3 (will only play for the campaign and not spending full price for 5hrs), and Zelda.. its not a game i've been waiting for..

The rise of the second hand games industry has meant even HMV offer very good store credit. Keep an eye on hotukdeals too, there are some surprisingly good deals on there.

[bitesize]

i do preorder and pay full price for games sometimes, but only the really special must-have ones which i'm pretty sure i'm gonna love. also preorder bonuses will sway me in those cases too, i am a sucker for them sometimes. preordered Arkham City from Tesco for the steelbook and free Joker challenge maps, preordered LA Noire for some extra mission bits. same for Red Dead Redemption. but those are the only games i can remember preordering this year, generally i wait for a few months and get stuff when it's around the £20 mark, that's the sweet spot for me. very rarely buy second hand cos i prefer my money to go to the people that made the game rather than the shop that sold it...

[WesterlyWinds]

I used to pre-order a lot of games and didn't really care about paying full price. That was back when I mainly used my PC for gaming, however, and PC games are always much cheaper. Now I've 'only' got a PS3 and I do try and wait until games drop in price but sometimes it's too damn hard. I've been itching to buy Skyrim for days now. Thankfully I have managed to stop myself by making sure I keep myself busy with university work, but I think I'm fighting a losing battle...

I like to think of it on a price per hour of enjoyment basis. I bought Demon's Souls the other week for £15 and it took me around 30 hours to complete it. I thought that was a pretty good deal. Something like Arkham City I am not too sure how much time I would spend on it, so I cannot really justify spending £40-£50 when I might only get 15 hours of play time (I normally can't be arsed doing all the extra stuff like collecting the Riddler's riddles in Arkham Asylum).

Something like Skyrim would probably last me well over 100 hours though (I spent at least that much time on Oblivion) so, if you really think about it, I should just buy it. Right? ...Right?

[Ignatius_S]

...Something like Skyrim would probably last me well over 100 hours though (I spent at least that much time on Oblivion) so, if you really think about it, I should just buy it. Right? ...Right?

Right! Buy it... now!

[Zetetic]

I bought Skyrim (albeit with Amazon vouchers someone gave me), and I only tend buy games when they're 4 for a quid these days.

Also, I'd say I play a fair few (significant) mods and free games these days, to the point where I'd put it on an equal footing with games that I buy for money.

[spanky]

I tend to buy games and barely even play them a while (got Tiger Woods 12 for cheap and have given it about 10 mins tops since September, but it's one I know I'll end up getting into)

Big titles I look forward to, I buy on release and don't mind paying full whack for (FM, Uncharted, Batman) and then there are others I can hold out a bit for as I await the inevitable price drop (NBA 2K, WWE, Tintin has already gone under £20)