How much do you spend on games?

Hi,

I've always been curious about how much money you spend on games and downloadable content per month? Not hardware like controllers or graphic cards. I love games but they are crazy expensive. The last consoles I bought were PS3 and PS Vita. But I hardly spent any money on games because of the prices, so I ended up giving away the consoles to family members. I always felt bad when I bought games because the money could be spent on more important things. But that's for another thread.

Please share!

My spending has been slowing down a lot recently, especially as I forgo a lot of new releases and choose to buy old games, especially PS2, PS3 and PC games. I'd say that I maybe buy a new AAA title once every 3-4 months now, if not more. I feel okay about it, since I don't buy games for the sake of buying them anymore, and I kind of impressed myself by being able to resist purchasing a PS4 for Bloodborne, electing instead to give the PS4 a couple years to build up a library. Of course, I squandered that by buying a PSTV day one, but what can you do?Doesn't help that games in Australia are kind of expensive.

If I were to try to give an average, I would say I spend $20-$60 on games in any given month, assuming I buy any games at all. That's about half of a shift at work at most, so I feel okay about that.

Most months, under $20. Sometimes $40-$45 if a big release that I can't wait for comes out, but I almost never pay full retail price for a game. The exception is during the two big Steam sales per year, sometimes during those I can drop $100-$150 on a bunch of games, then spend the rest of the year getting through them. I think on average, I may spend $300-$400 per year on games, it's hard to say exactly. It's not much though. Of course there are occasional hardware costs associated with keeping my PCs updated, but I use those for many other things, not just gaming.

I find gaming to be one of my most economical hobbies. PC gaming, anyway. I gave up consoles completely a couple of years ago.

My buying habits are not consistent. I usually buy games in bulk, and most months I dont really buy anything. I'd say over a span of 6 months or so though, I most likely have spent a few hundred dollars.

OK! Interesting figures. Spending up to $60/month or $400/year aint that bad. I could live with that. However I do often feel that given the amount of games that are being released and the high prices of consoles, I should buy a lot of games. Otherwise I'm thinking: "Why did I ever buy this console if I dont buy more games?". I live in Sweden, so game prices here are quite high as well.

Too much. A lot of impulse buys and very few completed games.

@thegreven: Yeah our prices are pretty crazy. Thank god that I want less of the biggest games nowadays though, so most of the games end up being between 15-30 euro.

For the record, a few years ago a $60 game in the US was $110 in Sweden. Now it's closer to $70-$80.

more than i should but less that i would want to.

@thegreven: I understand your concerns, especially since modern gaming trends seem focussed on nickel and diming consumers at every possible turn. It used be the case that you could buy a game brand new and not have to worry about missing out on content because you refuse to pay more; that is very much not the case anymore. In response to trends like this, it serves people well to really think about that new AAA game they want to buy. I've locked myself into only 2 big games I'm planning to purchase day one this year, and there's really nothing much that will change my mind on that.

Translated to US prices I probably spend about 150-200 bucks per month. It's about 50% more with local prices. Basically I buy around 2 big new releases every month on average, and then a good amount of smaller games on top of that as well. I don't really touch micro-transactions and very rarely buy DLC.

Varies from month to month too rapidly to tell. Some months nothing at all but others who knows depending on the offers / gaming related equipment such as cables, systems, controllers I get.

Not much, I'm (almost) always buying games a couple years after they've released & buy a lot of them second hand where you can get some PS3 games for like £3. I get a few games as presents for birthday/xmas too.

I spend no more than £200 a year (usually less, last year was ~£100). With that much I'm certainly not wanting for games, I even have a little bit of a backlog going.

I'm a student atm so I'll probably spend a bit more more when I'm working, but I think it can actually a pretty cheap hobby if you're willing to wait awhile and look for deals.

Probably between £1000 and £1500 pa back when good (or at least interesting) 'full price' games came out almost every week.

Nowadays maybe 2-3 full price games a year and a couple hundred on other assorted cheap stuff on Steam, GoG, Kickstarter etc. So maybe ~£400 a year?

No idea. It used to be a lot. Like... a lot. But I found out I like replaying amazing games more than playing a new game I don't feel strongly about. I've been going strong on Enemy Within, Dark Souls (II), State of Decay, Don't Starve and Destiny for a long time now.

I don't know. I've gone a few months without spending much at all and then suddenly I'll spend quite a bit.

I'm not as frivolous as I used to be. After I got a gaming PC, there was a period where I'd just buy anything I was remotely interested in if it was on sale and it's resulted in a large library of games that I'll probably never finish. That's fine, a lot of people do that, but these days I kinda just buy what I want when it comes out. That results in fewer games, but more games that I finish and get more out of.

Way way too much money, mostly impulse buys especially on Steam sales. I've also spent 270ish bucks in Marvel Heroes because I'm a bad person.

Interesting to read what others spend. I don't have too much time to play and I usually don't feel the need to buy games immediately when they come out, so not too much. I recently bought a PS4 so it's a bit more at the moment as I'm enjoying my shiny new toy, but for my 360 it was about the equivalent of $30-35 a month, I think. No pc and I don't care about mobile games, so that saves on all the Steam and Humble sales.

used to get a full priced game a month pretty much, sometimes two in the holiday game rush, plus a downloadable game once a month too, so maybe £60-£70 a month average. then I got final fantasy xiv, and now I only spend £9 a month on games.

Around $200 a month I guess.

A lot if not most. That said, I am very diligent about pricing and almost never pay full price for anything.

Thinking about it recently I wondered if I could justify it to myself and I came to the conclusion that it's fine. I don't smoke or drink, I have no debt (other than student loans), I don't watch movies or buy new music, I don't pay for TV packages because I don't watch TV, I don't like to go on holiday or take trips. Things that most other people will spend their money on. Of course, I certainly waste a bunch of it since I can't possibly play everything I buy.

Last year I spent maybe 600 dollars on discounted PC games, after pirating for many years. This year I didn't spend much at all.

I'd say $15 to $100. I used to buy every single game that looked remotely interesting (and always the Collector's Edition), but my spending has died down in recent years. PS+ and Games with Gold has also given me plenty to play.

It helps that I stopped buying Steam sale games, since my laptop is old now and heats up to the point where I don't want to play on it.

Depends on how many 'must-own' games come out. The Witcher 3 and Bloodborne have been those for me this year, but I have bought other games on a whim: Dirt Rally and Besiege. Waiting for some games to go on sale before buying: Ori and the Blind Forest and Hotline Miami 2. Dying Light when it's really cheap, and maybe Kerbal.

I also buy new consoles when they come out, even if there are no games I really want.

I'd say the average monthly payment for me is something like 5 dollars. So if I buy a full priced retail game, it will probably be my only purchase that year. Though generally I only buy games when steam creates 70%+ offers or humble bundles.

btw this is partly why I am not a paying member of GB, I can hardly accept that half the hobby related costs go to the hobby and the other half to the media of that hobby.

Since before I got a ps4 it wasn't much. But in the last two months I got hotline Miami 2, Bloodborne, axiom verge and Titan souls. I passed on mortal kombat though.

70 % of the games i buy are between the £5 - £19.99 range, second hand retail. 25 % are are download only, and 5 % are new releases.

I very rarely buy new games these days. A good deal of the ones I do buy are used. I think we spend about...200 a year total on games. That is including both myself and my husband's game spending in that total.

About $350-$400 a year on new release games. Probably an extra $30 for DLC, and another $75 on sales. So in total probably between $400-$500 a year.

It probably helps that I don't really care too much about the latest triple A games these days and don't feel like spending full price on them. I also recently got into PC gaming and getting games for practically pocket change has been pretty sweet.

Ten dollars or so a month, I'd say. I never get newly released games, and I'm ok with that. Selling Steam trading cards & using it on deals helps supplement that.

Some months nothing, other months I go over 100$ that's for sure. it be interesting to track though.

About 60 dollars a month give or take. Rarely new AAA titles, but there's so many interesting small games coming out all the time. Unfortunately there's a lot of them i don't finish

Good question. I have no idea anymore. Since I started making so much at work and not having the income sucked up by a wife or kids I just get whatever I want, when I want.

I only reserve full price spending every once in a while for games I'm particualrly excited for, which doesn't happen often. These include GTA V, Skyrim, and The Witcher 3. Most games I can wait for a price I feel is reasonable for me (around £20 usually)

Normally about $50-$100 a month. However, I have recently submitted to the spell that is iRacing. If I play my cards right, less than that, but a lot more upfront when new seasons start and I need to buy tracks.

Hardware on the other hand..... damn you simracing!!!

Translated to USD, probably around $150-200 a month. Usually at most one full price game ($80-90) and a bunch of indie or GOG titles.

According to my game list for last year I spent roughly $430 buying games, I also had probably 2 months of gamefly for $50, and bought a PS4 for $400. There wasn't much I wanted to play last year, so I think it was probably below average (not including the console).

So far this year I've spent $200 buying games, and I've had Gamefly for 3 months for $75. Based on what I still want to buy, and what hasn't come out yet, I think I'll probably get to like $600 this year.

I probably spend less than $15 on DLC per year if I spend anything.

I couldn't give you a per month figure since it swings so wildly, but I can tell you that it's between $150-250 per year for games. I will buy a couple of $69.99 CAN new releases, play a bunch of PS+ or Xbox Gold releases and get old games on sale for relatively cheap. For the small amount of money I pay per year for games I feel like I get to experience a lot.

I'm basically where this guys is. Maybe 4 new releases a year and the odd few dollars on digital stuff. Depends on the year I guess. This year I've only bought Helldivers and Bloodborn. Maybe $300 to $350 a year? Maybe less? I dunno. Money. I spend money.

I probably spend more money drinking. No. I definitely spend more money drinking.