How much does price influence your video game buys?
 

Do you have to have the latest and greatest game the day it comes out or are you willing to wait awhile until the price comes down?

Being a big NASCAR fan I had to get NASCAR Thunder 2003. I also am picking up the xbox live games when they come out so I can play online.

But lately I've been buying more of the older games I find on sale including:

Blood Wake
Circus Maximus
Dark Summit
Dave Mirra BMX
JSRF
Knockout Kings 2002
Legends of Wrestling
NBA Live 2002
Tony Hawk 3

These games weren't worth $50 to me when they first came out, but at $20 or less, I'm finding them to be quite entertaining. Blinx, for example, is a game I'm looking forward to having but at $50 (or even $40), I'm having trouble pulling the trigger. I'd rather buy a couple of the older games instead.

How about you? Old or new? Or a combination of both? Will you buy a heavily discounted game if you know the sequel is coming out in a few weeks? Do your friends influence your buying decisions?

I agree. I'm starting to pick up older titles for $20 bucks more readily than I'll pick up a new one @ $50.

Depends on the title. For example, on your list, I think I would only buy TonY Hawk 3 and Knockout Kings b/c I honestly won't touch the rest regardless of how cheap they are :)

I rarely by a game at the released $49.99 price. I wait for the $10-$15 off sales that usually come a week or two after release.

Many PC magazines have 15% or 20% coupons for PC games in each issue. Most I've seen are for purchases at Best Buy....

Amazon is also good for a bargain once in awhile. I landed "No One Lives Forever 2" from them for $33.95 + free shipping.....

Well, now that I will be a dual consolel guy soon, I'll take cheaper price over having it right away...I can get two games for the price of one new one if I wait a couple months.

Sure I'll be behind the times, but then I won't be as temped to read spoilers and stuff.

I rarely buy any game, pc or console, at it's MSRP. I'll wait for a sale. It's too bad that most of the high profile games rarely go on sale when they are released. BB/CC always have PC games/DVD's/CD's at greatly lower prices for their first week of release, but not so much with console games.

I wait 6 mo. then buy it at half.com for $20!

Depends...

Usually, as someone else said, the more popular games are discounted in the first few weeks of release. This is because stores like Best Buy want you to come in to the store, buy the game at a cheaper price, and hopefully buy something else. If it's a game that I'm borderline on, but that has gotten good reviews, I'll usually get it then.

I also weigh how likely it'll be discounted in the future, and also how much time I actually have right now to play the game. The latter is super important, because I've always had a backlog of games that I was super excited to buy, but couldn't play for a while, and by the time I can really play them they'll be really cheap.

For example, the latest Castlevania was on sale at CC for 22 bucks or so. I don't really have the time to play it right now, but I doubt it'll go down to any less than 20 dollars within the next year, so I got it. A game like Federation vs. Zeon I picked up right away at retail, mainly because I waited and waited for Zeonic Front to go down in price, and now I can't even find it.

I mainly play PS2 and GBA, and sales are pretty abundant on both. Also, if there's a game I'm mildly interested in but I know will sooner or later be a Greatest Hits title, I'll wait. Also, there will always be some kind of sale like KBs 20% off or last years TRU buy 2 get one free deals if you're patient.

Price is extremely important. I'm living off student loans and a part-time retail job in the DC area, so I don't exactly have a ton of cash to throw around.

I generally try to find bargains, or trade off/sale some games. I only pay MSRP for something I must have immediately like a Mario, Zelda, Metroid caliber game. Luckily my birthday is Nov. 14, so I won't have to worry about finding money for Metroid Prime. :D

I picked up a PS2 after the price drop mainly because I knew games like Metal Gear Solid 2, Devil May Cry, etc. would soon be hitting the $19.99 greatest hits line.

It depends on the game, but most of the time I'll wait until the price drops down to $30 or less. Most games, there's no penalty for buying it later. The only exception to this is online computer games, in both price and time penalty.

When WC3 came out, the cheapest price was $40 after a $10 GC. The price wasn't dropped to $30 until over a month after it's release. I could have waited until this price drop but didn't for 2 reasons:
1. When WC3 came out, there would be a lot of players to play against.
2. Everyone is at the same skill level, except beta testers.

#1 is not always a good thing as servers can get overloaded, but I'd rather have more games to sort through to find games with good internet connections.
#2 is fairly important to me for various reasons depending on the game. For instance, I used to play EQ and got a character up to 44 before I quit. There is no way that I'd ever go back and start a new account fo the simple fact that it'd take forever to get back up there. There's too much of a penalty for being behind the curve in terms of where everyone is.
In WC3, I was playing with newbs, but I was a newb, too. I recently started another account since I was cursed to be a 9-10 elf forever. It was frustrating starting off in the beginning being forced to play with the newbs again.

Price is extremely important ... with 2 small kids & 1 income it is a definite factor. Also, as I don't have a ton of time to put into games, I use that as a determination of cost/benefit.

Basically as long as you stay somewhat behind, there is usually a deal on something that will be "new" to me.

$20 (unless it is a must have game that i'm going to be playing right away for a while - GT3 was one of those).

love the PS2 greatest hits.

For me, it mainly depends on how bad I want the game in question. Other things can also play a factor, such as whether or not I'm still spending a lot of time with another game, and of course, how much spending money I have available.

Maybe with the PS2 and the Game Boy Advance -- I don't keep up -- but this is very rarely the case with the XBox and GameCube. Circuit City, Best Buy, Target, and the like very frequently advertise new releases in their weekly circulars, but it's exceedingly rare that the price tag will be any lower than $49.95.

PC game bargains are definitely more frequent......

Where are you shopping? $10-15 off a week or two after release? Only eBay has that sort of "deal" I guess.

I almost always buy a game I want 1-2 weeks within release. When I buy games, I have to have it, so I figure why wait. And I'm always trading/selling DVDs and games and other things on eBay, so it's pretty much a constant cycle of getting a new game half off, using money I made on a previous sale.

However, I have waited on many games lately and will surely see their price drop to $20-30 pretty soon. Like THPS3 is now $20 new everywhere for the Cube. Of course who the hell wants THPS3 (which I ripped to shreds on my buddies' PS2) when number 4 is coming out any day now? That's the real kicker.

I'm starting to get better, but I just need to play some of these titles ASAP.

PC Games mostly. Circuit City does alot of $37.99 deals ($12 off) right after release (UT2K2, NOLF2). XBOX games will sometimes come out at $39.99 initially (Lord of the Rings most recently).....


I agree that the XBOX, Gamecube, and PS2 bargains are few and far between....

The xbox was the focus of my original post. I never paid full price for any PC games.

Halo has been out for almost a year now and has never come down in price. They must be making a fortune on it. That's one I'm glad I bought early.

Some of the others like Rallisport, although a great game, I wish I had waited on.

Like Tendam, price is extremely important to me. Mainly because I'm cheap -ptth- . My first console purchase, a PS2, was done only because of the AMEX Blue 30% off promo at Virgin Megastore plus the $25 coupon that I could redeem on top of that on last Dec. 26.

My first "new" game purchase was also at Virgin (FFX) using the same discount. Since then, I've bought quiet a few games at Blockbuster whenever they have those "Buy 2 get 1 free" promos on pre-played games. The Greatest Hits has also been great buys, especially when you use those $5 video game coupons at BB and get them for $14.99.

I will be buying my first full priced game shortly (GTA: Vice City), but only because I still have credits from the EB trade-ins when I unloaded a bunch of crap DVDs.

PAL

I did notice that it was on sale briefly at Best Buy for $39.99. I wonder who's actually still buying Halo at full price? There must be hundreds of copies on Ebay........

In August alone, "Halo" reportedly sold 57,414 new copies, making it the fourth top selling game for the month and the most popular of Microsoft's. Of the several million XBox owners in the U.S., how many do you think use eBay as a frequent source of games?

True. It's Probably the same people you see in Suncoast paying MSRP for DVDs........

I found some good deals on ebay for games. I bought commandos 2 for $40 plus $4 for shipping. It's around $10 cheaper than B&M.

I'm not saying that using eBay is bad -- just refuting JaxComet's assumption.

Halo was on sale at CC or BB for like $37 one week. That's a pretty sweet deal right there. A game like GTA: Vice City is one you should buy ASAP...look at GTA3, still sells like crazy to this day at the $50 price tag. I've only seen a game like this sell at full price for months on end....a little game for the N64, some first-person shooter.

Anyways, not to totally change the topic, I think time influences me more than money. I'm not loaded or anything, but if I had more time, I'd totally buy a PS2 for GTA: VC, a XBOX for Halo and a ton more games for the GC. Gaming is fun and all, but these days I have less and less time for it.