Annual budget for gaming

[focusedthirdeye]

How many titles come out in a year that you wish you could own? How many do you actually buy?


For 2011....Is there 10 Games you wish you could own? 20? 30?

If it was 10 that would be approx $500-$600 or more at typical launch prices...

20 would be approx $1000-$1200.

The last games I have purchased were Just Cause 2, Starcraft 2, and Battlefield 3. The first two are highly recommended and I am still working on BF3 to see if I like it over bad company 2. I love battlefield Bad company 2...I got it on sale on steam for $7.99. I bet you don't believe me I think it was in the same year as it's launch date...

As a gamer, especially one that is in debt, It saddens me that I can't afford to participate in such great works of art. Even when I had money I had to be extremely frugal with game expenditures. Now that I have no money and am in debt it is impossible. Even though I did just put battlefield 3 on credit.......... Hopefully I am not addicted to gaming

Just curious and trying to start a conversation. I work on game design myself but I never do anything with it. If I was actually involved with making a game...I would want to sell it for as much as I could...but I would also want to give everyone the opportunity to play it for free, or for as cheap as possible. I would be an advocate of putting my own project on a torrent just to build up fanbase, donators, and purchasers. Plus the community can help develop ideas.


- Doug Rochford

[Jason181]

I probably want about 8-10 games at the moment. However, I probably buy around 60 games a year, most on sale. Rarely do I buy a game at release (battlefield 3, hard reset and a couple others being exceptions this year). My game purchase budget is probably around $1,200 a year or so, and another $1,000 on PC parts and stuff (rebuild every 18 months or so at around $1,500).

Once you get a backlog of titles on sales, then you can wait for the new releases to come down in price, with the possible exception of multiplayer titles like Battlefield where if you wait for 6 months, you'll be way behind the curve on knowing the levels, weapons and tactics. Because I wait for sales on most games, I don't feel bad if I play an hour or two and don't like it much, so I probably only actually finish half the games I buy.

[JustAnEngineer]

There are probably only half a dozen game titles per year that I buy when they are released. For the rest, I wait for a Steam sale. I have more funds available for buying games than I have time available to play them.

[tanker27]

Over the past 6 years my gaming yearly gaming budget went from $600 to around 200 or so. The main reason is WoW, since it was a MMO with an associated monthly cost I passed up on a lot of good games during that time. Now that I have quit WoW (going on 8 weeks now) I am playing catch up on a lot of stuff so most of which is heavily discounted by now. In the past two months I have completed a myriad of games, just this past week I finally completed Red Dead Redemption (damn them for not releasing a PC version, I mean how can they release LA Noire for PC but not RDR!?) and Arkham Asylum.

I see my cost slowly rising since not playing a MMO, but when SWOTR is released it should settle down again. The only release day game that I am looking forward to is Skyrim. I will probably wait for Arkham city to hit the bargain bin or GOTY edition.

[khands]

Probably spend around $200/year, most of that has been indy games lately. This is more to do with my financial situation than it does what I'd like to be buying

[Hawkwing74]

My money has been going elsewhere...I think I do under $200 a year as well. Sporadic WoW subscription and odds and ends. I usually troll Half Price Books for $5 or $6 video games.

[paulWTAMU]

maybe 400ish/year on games.

[derFunkenstein]

Probably spend around $200/year, most of that has been indy games lately. This is more to do with my financial situation than it does what I'd like to be buying

Pretty much for me, too. The last "big budget" game I bought at release was Disgaea 4 in early September, and before that I believe it was Starcraft II in 2010. I've probably pissed away $100-ish on sales and stuff in the last year, and the only "big budget" game coming out this year I want is Batman AC.

[ShadowTiger]

I have been spending about $100/year.

the last boxed games I bought were Starcraft 2, Dragon Age 1, and Borderlands, all on release day at full price. After getting shafted with overpriced DLC and the whole GOTY crap, I have decided that I won't buy games until 1 year after they come out, except for Blizzard games which apparently don't depreciate.

That being said, I spend the most money during Steam Sales, where I snatch up games for $5-10.

As a developer for a Free To Play indie game... I agree that more business models should be experimented with. If we every get more than 5 people playing the game each week, I have lots of Ideas I want to try out. I think the key is to offer a sample of everything for free, and let players purchase expansions to that content at their own will, but without locking them out of the experience if they don't pay.

[thegleek]

I have been spending about $100/year

same. but now that i think about it... i'm not sure how much i spend... i get the uber popular games when they come out (ie: deux ex, rage, etc...) but don't care that much to obtain them as soon as they are release...

now how much of this gaming budget do you people have for all these mobile apps/games now?

[ShadowEyez]

I usually get a few games/year and play the heck out of them. Recently starcraft2, though I still enjoy guildwars.

Games are getting more expensive, to both make and buy, and are demanding more time, so it's not like many ppl have time (or money) for even a few dozen games/year.

[thegleek]

This year blew my budget.

Blew my load on these games in 2011 (so far!), in order of purchase:

PC: Poker Night at the Inventory

PC: Limbo

PC: Terraria (steam | official site)

PC: Portal 2

PS3: Deus Ex: Human Revolution

PC: The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim

crazy year so far!

[thecoldanddarkone]

Typically I purchase 100-150 dollars worth of games a year. I generally buy discounted games, 20 dollars or less usually. Before starcraft 2 I didn't buy a game at full price release since d2.

[cynan]

Probably about $150, maybe $200/year. Though that can go pretty far if you wait for Steam and GOG sales. And probably about $500 to $1000 on gaming PCs/parts

[yogibbear]

Probably ~$1000 / yr without even trying. (Our retail games sell day 1 new for ~$75-85 USD at brick and mortar stores). Though I do tend to play a lot of indie titles / steam sales... so that brings it down to the modest $1k amount. If you included headphones, hardware, internet connection, etc. then it'd be a lot more.

[JustAnEngineer]

I picked up 12 games for $35 from the Steam sale yesterday.

[lex-ington]

$100 - don't matter what it is. . . .and it better be used or on sale. Only three games I pay full price for - Tiger Woods Golf, Final Fantasy, and Elder Scrolls.

[bobboobles]

I guess this year it ended up being about $100. Portal 2 and just got the new Zelda game are all I've gotten. That's probably been about the yearly spending for as long as I can remember - at least when I wasn't playing WoW.