News - Half of PC gamers wait for sales to buy their games says survey

[Smikis]

RRP is too high, most games today are released more bugy than a beta version should be.
Endless early access game, companies are selling alpha access, most of those games are in still " aplha " phase on release. After you "enjoy" couple of those games, you will stop buying anything on release, as most released are steaming pile of ****.

[mark_a_scott]

I am appauled by the range of PC games offered by Game. YOu go into the shop and you see PS3/4 on one side, Xbox 360/One on the other side, Wii, SkyLanders (taking up a whole shelf!) then the Blu-Ray, DVD. Then (if you are lucky) you get to the PC section where half of it is download only, then the Sims..... Oh, not forgetting the ****e games at £10 for 3 or £15 for 3.

No Grid Autosport in any of the 10 shops I visited over the past few months.... They should have stayed insolvent and saved everyone the hassle.

[kalniel]

I am appauled by the range of PC games offered by Game. YOu go into the shop

Well according to the Hexus news a while back, most people don't buy from them anyway - instead I think they use the likes of Amazon or Steam so shelf presence is kind of meaningless.

[AnyOldName3]

The last time I bought a game from Game was Skyrim, and only because I desperately wanted something to push my first gaming-grade GPU, and because I'd used my dad's phone to find out it was only £1 more than Amazon or Steam. Given that it had to download updates as soon as I got home, I decided I might as well have saved the pound and just bought it from Steam directly. The only benefit was that I got a poster, but I've left that in the case, so it really can't be used as a selling point.

[mikeo01]

It is too often the case for me that a popular and overhyped game, that you could easily pay £30+ for goes on sale for about £4 and turns out to be naff.

One reason I usually buy indie games now from Steam, there are a lot more thought out, enjoyable and meaningful games that have decent justifiable prices.

There's few top AAA games or big games companies that produce quality games that last. It is too often "more eye candy, less gameplay experience/plot/storyline".


... Which is why I wait for sales unless it is a game I know to be good (a.k.a an ongoing series of sorts).


Last time I went to a "game shop" such as Gamestation, Game, was back when I was on my Playstation 1


Also a bit embarrassing what they call a "heavy core gamer" as someone pointed out. 5 hours per week isn't a lot, I'd say that is a casual gamer most people probably read way more than 5 hours per week, are we heavy core readers? ha

[MrRockliffe]

I've got to the point where I torrent games before I buy them. It's saved me well over 100 pounds the past year. I would have bought watchdogs, ghosts and deadrising 3 had I not have torrented them. Now I won't because they're poor games that run terribly. It's a shame that it's come to this. I tried Far Cry 3, played it for 20 mins and bought it. No problems!

[crossy]

Indeed, the new trend is to pay more than the full price before the game's even released I continue to pay the full price for games I think are great, and will pick up ones I'm not sure about on offer if I think that brings them into my expectations of value for money.

I guess you're alluding to those darned "special editions" - I'm forever getting emails from either GAME or Ubisoft announcing another one. Most of these - imho - aren't worth the extra money anyway.

Interesting observation though - is it just me or are more of the Steam Sale items tending to be game packs? Whether that be Game Of The Year editions or some kind of bundled-DLC setup? If so, then I'm all in favour of it.

Oh, and I willingly paid over the odds for a game recently - having ponied up £60 to support SuperHot on IndieGoGo. So I guess I was a sucker and bought the "special edition" - darn it! That said, SuperHot does look like it could be worth the outlay.

[daddacool]

"A 'core' gamer, probably heavy"

Yes, he looks pretty heavy. Too much time in front of a computer, not enough exercise.

[Splash]

I don't understand the pre-order craze, especially in these days where most sales are of digital downloads. It's no longer an issue whereby you're likely to go to the retail store on launch day and find that they have no stock. I'll sometimes buy on launch day when I'm reasonably happy that the game will satisfy my expectations (Football Manager, the new Witcher game, not much else). The majority of stuff I'll read a number of reviews before parting with cash at full price, however when things hit the sales I'll often buy relatively on a whim. I bought Assassin's Creed 4 a couple of months back for £9 having never played any of the other games in the series. I got Far Cry 3 for £5. I also have tons of smaller indie games that I've played for maybe a couple of hours and will come back to occasionally.

I splooged £100 on the Elite: Dangerous Kickstarter, and I've barely played it yet. I wanted the game to be made *that much*, and I don't consider that in the same light as a pre-order for something like CoD (which is obviously going to get made until people stop buying it).

I might be a niche gamer, but that's largely because I'm at the point in my life where I can't spend 20+ hours a week on gaming. I have a career, and I like to get a good night's sleep.

[Defiant]

I begrudge even £30 for a game at time of sale, I can count on one hand the number of games I've paid full price for.

Civ 5 (Mistake due to its stability) and WoW expacs are most of them.

[Marenghi]

The report suggests the continuous waves of sales and discounts available for PC games means many wait for sales before purchasing any PC game title at all. The availability of these sales and deep discounts is good for players right now but there are worries the lack of full-price sales could stifle the industry

i wonder if this is why a lot of new AAA games are now being released at £50 instead of the £30 - £35 a few years back. Half price sale anyone?!

Or perhaps the other big publishers realised that the likes of EA/Activision are getting away with charging £50 - £60 for their AAA games because of hype/high demand to play the latest iteration of a gaming series and certain demographics of gamers are prepared to pay that sort of price to keep pace with their peers.

[kalniel]

I guess you're alluding to those darned "special editions" - I'm forever getting emails from either GAME or Ubisoft announcing another one. Most of these - imho - aren't worth the extra money anyway.

Actually I was thinking of crowdfunding schemes like kickstarter etc. though special pre-order editions sometimes annoy me as well. Worst are the buy x game from y retailer and get z bonus exclusively.

I think new games should be priced much higher than they used to be, but there ought to be a second hand option as well - I guess sales form the equivalent for buyers, but that does little to persuade people to buy new on release.

So I save it for games I am confident I will enjoy, or whose development I want to support. So far that's worked out great - Divinity:Original Sin was the last full priced game I bought and over 70 hours later I'm still loving it to bits.

[Noxvayl]

The only games I've spent more than £10 on, for a single copy (not counting Humble Bundles ), is Fallout: New Vegas (didn't play it for a year after purchasing it due to it being buggy) and Total War: Shogun 2 which was on sale for just above £10 when I got it if I remember correctly. Everything else either came with hardware I bought or was on sale for a reasonable price.

I think £30 is the upper limit of what should be acceptable for a PC game on release day, this isn't the 90s where there was significantly less people able to buy games; the market has grown, significantly, and they have gotten greedy trying to make more profit from it. Just Cause 2 comes to mind as a game that got it right, years after release it was still a top seller because it had the correct price for its age. Things like Call of Duty stay above other games release price years after release which is ridiculous and needs to stop.

I have 10+ games in my backlog, most over a year old and some in Humble Bundles I occasionally offer to forum members. I stopped counting my backlog games because it makes me sad that I haven't had time to play some really good games for more than a year. It makes me angry to think that publishers think they can shove any old garbage down my throat and expect me to pay a premium for it when I have so many other games that deserve my time and money, they can get stuffed for all I care. The last EA game I paid for was from a Humble Bundle, and I don't intend on paying for another one unless it turns out to be really good, and even then it goes on my wishlist which is 20+ long.

The market demands acceptable prices, and they give them only through sales which is ridiculous to begin with. Once they cater to the market, and stop trying to greedily take every penny they can from people with more money than sense, we might see an end to surveys like these.

[mikeo01]

Most indie developers charge a reasonable price for their games. Usually <£10 or just above.

But then again if big companies charged little for their games indie developers will feel like they need to charge even less for their games.

Both sides have positives and negatives. Cheaper big name games is better for all of us, but then it may start eating and pushing into the indie developer market. But then if charges are static at £30-40, it gives room to breathe for indie devs but then people will only end up buying a few games.


Another issue is, if things go "cheaper", guess what, people are going to overspend and probably full up their game lists with games they probably have no intention of playing.

Too cheap = overloaded market full of cheap games. A mess, with some good games lost under the sheer weight of the "cheapy game market". That is another disadvantage you have to look out for.


Take a look at the Steam marketplace, I think they are Greenlighting way too many games which means a mass flood of games. Will most be good quality? I doubt it. Some of the quality games I know for indie devs are lost under the masses. That result listing is going to get bigger and bigger. Ugh.

[Lucio]

Generally I object to paying physical box price for a digital download, as there aren't the same levels of cost involved. Not to mention Steam regularly discounts things by an insane level.

I'd be happier to see a £20 to £30 price range for PC games, balanced against worse discounts (so not dropping much below £15) and would buy more titles sooner

[pastymuncher]

Personally I would never pay full price for a game as I think the price is too high for most, if not all of them anyway. I would also never pre-order a game only on release day recieve a buggy pile of crap that should never have been released. It makes far more sense to wait until a game has been fixed and by then the price will have dropped considerably. Then there's the Steam sales and all the bundle deals as well.