How are people comfortable paying full price for games?

This is an honest question. I simply cannot fathom paying roughly $75 for a new console game. To the best of my memory, I only remember spending full price on Catherine several years ago just after it was released. Another related question, how do people justify pre-orders? The case of AssCreedUnity and the Battlefield games comes to mind, what if the game turns out to be terrible? What then? There goes $75 and a lot of frustration.

But at the same time I can't really fathom someone spending over $1000 dollars on card packs in Hearthstone in the hopes of building a complete cosmetically gold card collection..

For me: there are of course a few games that I would LOVE to play as soon as possible. Namely, MGSV, Persona5 and FF7 Remake. FF7 pretty much solidified my decision to buy a PS4.. eventually. But i'm not in a rush to play them and would feel fine waiting another year or so to play the games.

Also a few months ago I've started subscribing to PS+ and taking advantage of the deals and free games. For example, recently I bought Sleeping Dogs and Just Cause 2 for roughly $10. And it was certainly a blast (just finished Sleeping Dogs, and a few hours into JC2, which is awesome), but I thought, "man, $60 for a 12 hour game (referring to Sleeping Dogs), man I feel sorry for people who paid full price for this."

And that's true for a lot of games. It's just really confusing when I see people complaining about their pre-orders, or games not working, when it was their decision to spend their money, full price on a game that isn't out yet. Or get a game on impulse first day and complain about it not being worth it. Like... it was your money. I don't get it. You could have waited for more information about the product to make a more educated spending decision, but no.

I don't buy the "well I paid money for this so I expect it to work to my full expectations" argument, because that's the problem, those are your expectations, and you made a decision based on those expectations and the limited amount of info. available, to SPEND your money on it anyways. There is NO contract involved b/w the customer and game developer, in spending money at the store to buy a game. If it works to your expectations, GREAT! You can trust this developer/supplier more in the future, when you have to make another purchasing decision from them! If it doesn't work to your expectations, too bad! But you still have information on the developer to inform your future purchasing decisions, namely.. the next time you think of purchasing something from them you have reason to doubt that they will live up to your expectations!

Just like how if you go to a restaurant and receive bad service, you know not to eat there anymore, and not buy their food.

For me, in terms of games, this means Capcom. Fuck you capcom. How many iterations of SF4? Yeah I feel kind of bad about spending X amount of dollars on different versions of SF4, even if I didn't buy any of the DLC and skipped over AE (I bought Vanilla, Super and Ultra). But ugh, thinking about what they might do with SF5, just makes me say "nope, I know how you work Capcom, based on past purchasing experience, and the level of enjoyment I got from them relative to money and time spent in it was not really worth it, so no thankyou on SF5". BUT of course like anything in life, I'm open to being surprised, but I'll need some convincing, more information and good arguments to persuade me that anything Capcom puts out in the future is worth investing in.

Conclusion: Ugh, man I feel like that sort of turned into a rant. But a lot of the times it just feels like people are being reaaallly irrational when it comes to talking about games. But we here at GB are rational people... right?

Do people not give much thought when pre-ordering or paying full price for a game? Or is it just the media/forums that makes it seem like each individual spends lots of money on games, when in reality most individuals, like myself, only pay full price for a game once a year or something? Sort of like how the complainers are heard the most, but we never know about the 'average' spender?

Anyways that was fun to get some of these thoughts out. Thankyou for reading full, if you did. Also please leave comments, would love to hear different perspectives, or cases. Like how often have you paid full price/pre-ordered a game? For me I never pre-order, and pay full price game maybe once a year or something. :o

If a game is good enough it can be worth buying at full price, if you're too busy or not sure then you can wait for the price to go down which it often will precipitously.

I've gotten quite a few games at full price this year and have felt bad about none of the purchases, and I'm likely not done, granted this is a departure from my usual approach of 1-2 full price games but it's also a year when a bunch of excellent games came out.

A hell of a lot more less comfortable considering the state of the industry releasing broken games, and game prices being 80+ dollars now. I just wait to see what the community of the game has to say before purchasing. Patience is a virtue!

For me it all depends on the game. If its a game that has me really excited to play, I'll say fuck it and just fork over full price. For example, MGSV is a game that I am really excited to play and will likely pay full price for it. Otherwise, there are tons of very good reasons to wait. You mentioned ps+ and that has been great for me. I got to play Injustice: Gods Among Us thanks to ps+ which i thoroughly enjoyed. That and steam sales make a compelling argument to wait.

But like I said I will likely get MGSV day of release cause god damn those gameplay demos are making me so excited.

I rarely do it and when I do, it's a game that I have a lot of faith in and I believe I'll enjoy it a lot.

Between Steam Sales discounting games only a few months after release and the ever present used game market (not to mention retailer markdowns on new games), I usually don't pay the full $60 for retail releases unless I reaaaaaaaallly want to play something the day it comes out (and EVEN THEN stuff like GreenMan Gaming exists to get me new games on sale before they even come out). I think it's worked out pretty well for me thus far.

It depends on the game and the developer. There are also reviews (and this depends on reviewers I feel align with my tastes or have interesting viewpoints) having an embargo before release date (ex. Bayonetta 2) that can lead to me giving a game a shot at full price at release or through preorder. I also get plenty of games on sale/later on if they aren't up my alley or I am unsure of them.

I usually feel like I get my money's worth when I buy a game at full price, because I've spent enough time looking into the game before I buy it to know that it's something I will enjoy. For example, the last two games I bought at full price were the Witcher 3, which is probably going to be my GOTY, and FF14: Heavensward, which I am not done with yet, but having spent plenty of time with ARR I was confident it would be worth the money. (Thus far it has.)

This is also why I don't have a problem with pre-ordering, because when I do go out and pick up a game on day 1 I usually know what I'm getting into. Some might think it's foolish not to wait for reviews, but I can count the number of times I've felt burned by my purchases on one hand. (And the most notable ones that comes to mind weren't even from pre-ordered or day 1 buys.) I've spent enough of my life now playing games to trust my instincts and know the value of what I am going to buy.

That all said, I don't think I actually buy new games as often as some people. It's not like I go out and buy every new release that comes out. The Witcher 3 and Heavensward were pretty close releases, but I probably won't be buying any new games for the forseeable future.

It's a bit ranty in the way it went about it but it did make me think about this point. Which is that from the dawn of video games as something people paid money for, there has always been a significant number of people who do not. Coin-operated arcade machines, game rental stores, the used game market, retail mark down, and now digital sales all reflect the fact that games have never not had an option to avoid spending a lot of money in addition to options to pay full price.

I go to the video game outlet and buy the day old games at a discount. Yeah sometimes they are stale and very rarely you might get some moldy games but the price cut is worth it.

Yeah, game prices are getting insane. In Canada it's 78 dollars for a new console game. Splatoon was the first game I've bought for that price in a long time, and that was only after thinking about it a whole lot. You can save a lot of money just by buying games a few months or a year after they come out. But, a lot of people are willing to pay the money just to be part of the zeitgeist, or they are made impatient by reading reviews and forums and such.

It depends on the game and the developer. I don't preorder stuff and I almost never buy Triple A games from multi billion dollar publishers on launch but when a small studio puts out a wargame about the conflicts in French Indochina I pay full price.

Feel pretty good about it. Though I only buy like 2 big games per year. If I was buying more, I'd probably be more cautious about it.

I generally enjoy games enough to feel I've gotten my money's worth? I know in this day and age games are supposedly only worth $1-5, but I don't know, sometimes I play a game and I really enjoy myself, and am, shock, happy to have bought it on release at or around full price.

Because I want my games digitally for convenience and I have the money to pay for them.

@auron570: Many of us aren't children and spending a few hundred bucks a year means nothing to us. I'm an engineer and quite frankly my video game budget pales in comparison to my weekly lunch budget. Video games are a luxury item, not a required item to live. Don't like it? Get a job/better job/sacrifice something else.

I've never spent $75 on a game unless I bought a collectors edition that is actually limited- in those cases I've spent upwards of $100. If I spend that much on a game it's because I know I'll like it (and I can't think of a time I was disappointed in those cases).

Otherwise I often get games for less than $30 because getting PC games cheap has (for me anyway) always been fairly easy. Console games on the other hand have always had inflated prices (a lot of that is with good reason, though- making a video game is legitimately expensive these days). Still, I've never spent more than $60 on a console game and that's only because I know it's a game I want.

For me games have gotten cheaper, though. Only recently I got around like, maybe 30 PC games I think, for around $100. That's insanely cheap.

I guess this a "preaching to the choir" question, though, because I'd wager anyone who reads this is "informed" and the people who make up the majority of people who buy games day one or full price are not. Most people (even those who regularly play video games) have no interest in video game websites, reviews, or whatever. They just buy the games they are interested in when they see them.

I can't afford to buy games at full price. I work 46 hours a week but between having children and a house to run there's no way can I justify spending £50 on a video game every fortnight.

I will very occasionally do it, for example when the next Elder Scrolls game is released or the next Zelda. The last game I bought on release was Splatoon, and only because I got it for £26.

But I see it like this; why do I need to spend £50 on the Witcher 3, which I really want to play, when instead I can spend £20 on Far Cry 3, or Shadow of Mordor, both of which I also really want to play. It just makes no sense. At no point have I played everything I want to and am just sat there eagerly awaiting the next new release.

@auron570: New games really aren't that expensive. Going out to dinner twice a week costs more than a new game.

I rarely do. I mostly buy my games from a local shop, because most of the time they are on sale so yeah.

Some people are more hung up on getting a good deal than what they're actually buying sometimes, I sometimes buy stuff on release day (Project CARS) on a Friday because I just decide to. Do I really care that I could have saved a couple of pounds ordering online or waiting two weeks? I'll manage to sleep either way.

I feel like you're conflating two issues here. To answer the question in the title directly, some people just have more money. I'm not in any way some super rich person, but buying 15-20 full price games every year isn't really that big of a dent in my budget especially considering how much time I spend on the hobby.

As for the second (more implied) question, how can people pre-order and then complain when they don't get what they expected ? Well, they're human. It's a completely normal response to get upset if you don't get what you expected. Should they know better ? Probably, but it's sorta the entire business of game publishers, to "trick" people into buying their products. I think it's important to realize that it isn't necessarily about the money though. It doesn't matter if you pay $5 or $500, if it doesn't live up to the expectations it doesn't live up to expectations. Hell, many people get upset over games not living up to expectations even when they are completely free to try out.

I feel fine considering the pure amount of time and man power it makes to create a game now. Like it's actually insane. It amazes me that anyone actually makes videogames.

Also I only buy games I want to play plus I tend to replay games eventually even if their is no intrinsic replay value built in.

I can afford to but prefer not to. This generation the only game I paid full-whack for is Project Cars and even then it was under the proviso I was buying it for review purposes. Seeing as I get at least half-a-dozen games a year for free for reviews, this doesn't seem a bad deal. I just generally prefer to be savvy as gaming's an expense that's always going to be on my radar.

As has been said already, it all depends on the game and the amount of disposable income that you have. Another thing that often comes into play is priorities. I used to buy far more games at full price than I do now even though my financial situation has improved significantly. The simple fact is that my priorities have changed. And with that change comes a different way of looking at how I spend my money.

Also, I've come to realize that a lot of games I have bought have never actually been finished. Some of them I haven't even played yet. And with the way things have changed for me these last few years I've come to the conclusion that it really is nuts to continue spending so much money on games when I haven't even touched the ones I have.

In short, we are all different and what works for one might not work for someone else. The only thing that matters is that you're ok with it and that you're having fun with your hobby. If not, see about making some changes.

Because I was paying £50 for games in the 90s.

I mean, shit, how do you justify paying anything to see a movie in theaters? Most tickets clock in at about a third the price of a game and historically my personal track record regarding full-price games versus full-price movie ticket purchases has overwhelmingly favored purchasing full-price games. Sure, they're different mediums, but put flatly, I feel ripped off when see a movie in theaters, and for some reason I don't feel that way with video games carried at assumed release-market value nearly as much.

It's very complicated. It's as much rooted in the very Idea of Triple-A Game in western consumer culture as it is the dramatic drop in quality and aggressive price-cutting on product experienced in digital indie marketplaces. Neither is a simple issue to take apart, but the most honest and still wide-ranging answer I can come upon is that, there are as many metrics for what $65-75' worth of entertainment can or should look like as there are people partaking in said entertainment.

Meh. I don't really outspend myself anywhere else so I have the disposable income to do it. Though It's been a while since I bought a game for more than $40~ The games I want to buy immediately on release have generally not been full price when they came out anyways.

Street Fighter 5 might be the exception at this rate, but that game is way too expensive on pc. >.>

For me it's pretty simple. My financial situation is such that I can afford to buy new games when they come out without a problem. I'm not balling or anything, but it's not that big a deal.

That said when something is a bad deal I don't go for it. If I see a game is clearly super short and linear with little replayability then I won't put down $60 out of principle. The Steam sale is ending and throughout it all I still thought $15 is a little much for Invisible inc. I have different thresholds for what I think something is worth.

But overall buying things new is just not a huge issue. It's an expensive hobby.

Depends on a few things.

Time. If you don't have a lot of free time you are more comfortable with waiting for a price cut, since from release date to the price drop you wouldn't be that far ahead with the game to begin with.

Hype. For many people it's important and fun to be able to discuss the current releases with a personal level of insight. We are all hobbyists here and while we probably mainly play games for fun, it's undeniable that we enjoy keeping up with gamer friends, duders on forums, the Bombcrew, etc when it comes to the games currently being talked about.

YInner pride. Some people just want to play the newest releases to see what games, and their PC rigs, are capable of. Play Witcher 3 on max settings on the day of release feels pretty darn good just from the purely visual point of view. It's probably comparable to a car enthusiast sitting in the newest Porsche. It just feels hella good.

Money. If you don't have as much to spend on games you'll obviously hold with your purchase in order to maximize value by buying games on sales.

Enjoyment. Simply how much you like and need gaming. Some people are alright with play a few hours a week, some need to play for hours a day.

There you go. THYME is the answer to all.

Everyone's individual value proposition equation is the same, even if the variables have different values.

At one end, the purchasing cost of games is the main limiting factor. At the other end, the limiting factor is the time cost.

Other things matter, such as the opportunity cost of other things that you could be doing not being possible because you are playing a video game instead, but in the end I think considerations like this can be bundled into an individual's general time cost.

As the average age of gamers gets older and older, it makes perfect sense that time cost is going to be of greater general importance than purchasing cost, because time costs the gamer significantly more than the purchase cost.

I'm cheap when it comes to buying games. I very rarely buy anything for 60 bones, usually I wait for a sale or something.

Last game I bought for 60 was Bloodborne, and the one before that was Grand Theft Auto V.

I've placed precisely four pre-orders in my life, all for games I was very excited for - so that's your answer. If I have confidence that a game is good and I want to support the dev, I'll pre-order.

My first one was The Last of Us, because the price was discounted 3 months before release and I wanted to play the game on launch, since I was leaving for a week and didn't want to get anything spoiled. The courier came three days before the game premiered, so speaking of pre-order bonuses, fucking A.

I think when the thing that's most likely to make you buy a new console is a FF7 remake then you clearly have different priorities to other gamers. I like playing games when they come out because that's when my friends play them, and that's when things are new and haven't been figured out and you have a community of people to talk to about them.

Have no familial responsibilities and no other expensive hobbies, along with the fact I don't drink or smoke or even go out all that much = more money for games. I do however always try to find good deals rather than pay full price. I buy from the US PSN store rather than the EU one because it's cheaper, and there are a lot of key resellers for PC games. I got Arkham Knight & Season Pass for 1/4 of the full price, same with Witcher 3. There are ways around paying full price.

I am in the same boat.

That said, I definitely do not pre-order. There is rarely any benefit to doing so. I'd much rather wait a few days to discover exactly how broken a game is. Once the game is out and patched to my satisfaction, then I'm more than happy to pay full price to support the game.

I still think a consumer has the right to expect a product to function on the day of purchase, no matter how fucked the industry has been. It doesn't make the consumer less in the right to complain, it just makes the industry look less reliable. I mean, if you buy a brand new car straight from the manufacturer, wouldn't you expect it to work? Why shouldn't we as consumers be allowed to hold video games to the same standards as other products?

Buying at full price; I can afford it and compared to other things I spend money on it's probably a better investment than a lot of those. Personally, I don't do dollars to hours ratio because that says nothing. I try to quantify it like this; was the game rewarding and entertaining enough during it's time to have felt like it was worth the money? Even if the game takes 8 hours to finish, if those were 8 awesome hours, I don't care if it was a full price game or not.

As for preorders, I don't have a philosophical opposition to them because I generally know what I'll like. But I don't have to have them on day one anymore (for various reasons), so preorders become pretty pointless.

Sweet, sweet digital gluttony..

I sell games once I'm done with them on eBay. I can get two months use out of a game and still sell it for over half the original price. Whoever buys it from me probably thinks I'm the mug and they got a good deal, but I've effectively rented the game at release for 25c a day.

The only times I'll ever pay full price for a game are when it's something I'm really hyped for and I don't feel like waiting for it to be on sale. Most of the time I won't buy anything unless it's 50% or more off on Steam or something. But games like Persona 5, Final Fantasy 15, Kingdom Hearts 3, Fallout 4, etc. I just can't wait to play.

I only buy a few full priced games every year, I've been doing that for about seven years or so now. It wasn't uncommon in my teenage years that I might have had a brand new spankin' game every month but as I get older I find myself content to wait for price cuts on most things. I have only bought one full priced game this year and that was DBZ: Xenoverse to play with a buddy since we're both DBZ nerds. Fallout 4 will be my only other this year purchase, otherwise I've been working on the backlog or buying games at a deep cut.

It also helps that I don't spend my money on many other hobbies, I don't buy blu-ray movies and I haven't bought any anime box-sets since I was a teen, they can cost a chunk of change and I'm content to watch whatever occasional interesting anime comes my way via Netflix or Hulu. I buy a few books and CD's here and there, but again not very often. So whatever money I set aside for entertainment is usually just spent on games. Which would allow me to buy a lot of them on release if I wished, but my buck goes further when I wait for price drops or sales.

It's all about financial situation. It really depends how big of a chunk $80 is out of their disposable income.

As an example, I work full time and could probably buy a game a week and not break the bank, so to speak. But I tend to share the opinion of many above, with so many broken or buggy games recently, I tend to hold off for a few months, and save about 30-50% due to Steam sales as a result. I do buy some things day one, but I have to be really looking forward to them - like Witcher 3, recently. And likely Fallout 4 this fall - knowing full well Bethesda games are buggy as hell - but also that the PC community will fix the worst of them in 72 hours.

Preordering: I don't find it super offensive, and don't quite understand just why it's so 'evil'. Amazon and most online retailers expect nothing in advance. Stores ask only for $5, which you can demand back at any time, no questions asked. Publishers cannot access any of this money until the order has been filled. Digital preorders tend to be paid in full (though most reputable places will refund you in full at any point prior to release) but since supply isn't an issue, you can wait until day before for those.

I have movie nut friends who see 2-3 films a week and see everything when it comes out, and it's the same deal. And friends who are more 'mainstream' and spend weekend nights out clubbing. They probably spend a hundred bucks a week on alcohol and cab fare.

Anything will get a certain set of early adopters willing to pay extra to be in at the start, whether its games, movies, cars or TVs.

I mean, back when I was broke I couldn't justify it. Now i feel like i worked my ass off for this money I should be able to spend it on things I enjoy. Only game i've felt cheated by paying full price lately is Destiny, even games I bought that i didn't like didn't make me as mad as when i bought that game. Probably because, i guess like Jeff, I really enjoyed parts of Destiny so I really felt cheated when i didn't get what i felt like was a complete experience.

I would definitely rather pay 65$ once for a complete game, than pay for free to play/pay to win tokens etc. I have dropped 20 - 45$ in games like DConline and Warframe though, and I felt like i got my money's worth when I did. But i would absolutely rather pay full price than to pay more over time to get a full game.

And I usually get Pre-orders like at most a week before and usually around a day or 2 before release, so technically I don't really pre-order lol. Destiny made me question even doing that as well.

I think games are a great value considering the prices of DVDs, Blu-Ray and albums. Even if it isn't everything you want.

@pkmnfrk: This exactly.

I buy a retail game every two months or so. I never read reviews always pre-order yet I haven't regretted a purchase in the last five years, it's getting eaiser and easier to judge a games quality based on a couple of trailers. Not knowing what a games like is the best part if I call it wrong you can always trade in.

Why? Because I'm impatient that's why. I could save a lot of money if I bought used but I dont because I'm okay with paying for convenience.

My reason for buying games on launch day is because I want to play it as soon as possible and I trust that the developers have made a competent game that works. I think people are entitled to complain if they paid $60+ for a new game and it doesn't work. When you buy a ticket to see a movie, you'd expect it to work right? Of course not everything can meet your expectations, even The Witcher 3 has its fair share of problems (technical or otherwise) but I still love the heck out of it. As to whether a game is worth it or not, it really just comes down to personal taste, like your opinion that Sleeping Dogs isn't worth $60, but someone else might. You might judge the game based on the hours to dollars ratio, but I would judge it based on the production value, their faithfulness/attention to detail in recreating the city of Hong Kong. In the end, it's all just opinions and no one is right or wrong.