Do You Usually Buy a Game at Release or Do You Wait a Long Time for it to Get Cheap and Patched?

There are a rare few games I buy Preorder or at release. I like Sniper games a lot and bought Sniper Elite V2 as a preorder, especially for the Hitler kill mission, but I’m 2 missions away from completing the game but I don’t see my Hitler mission or my DLC game mission on the missions list yet. I bought Spec Ops the Line at release because $30 is my max limit price for a new release, same with Max Payne 3. I will buy a new release only if it goes on sale for $30 or less and it’s a hot interesting title. Did that with Batman Arkham city [Origin] for $22 yet I only played 4% of the story by now. Then when a year passes by with Arkham city GOTY edition – with all the DLCs and it goes on sale for $7.49 I rebuy the game for Steam. But the Origin and Steam savegames aren’t the same and the Windows Live accounts handle them separate. It was way cheaper to buy the GOTY edition than buy all the DLCs for the Origin game.

Now I got so many games I bought on sale near release and I hardly played them. Like Dead Island for $20 then I didn’t even play it for a year {I only got 25 minutes on it!]. Or Dungeon Siege 3 – bought it near release for $20 and today I only have 18 minutes logged on it… So that’s REAL PATHETIC! So now I tell myself I won’t buy the latest hot game releases until they get cheap or 1 year old and I will play my old games instead. I haven’t even started my Mass Effect 3 Digital Deluxe, which I got for $20. I’ll wait for AC3, Far Cry 3, Company of Heroes 2, Crysis 3, and Dead Space 3 [I haven’t even started my DS 1 & 2] to get a year old or maybe when they hit < $25 to get them. I hardly played my Crysis 2 after paying $40 for it, because I hated it’s checkpoint save game system. Company of Heroes 1 is great but I’m still in the first campaign and I got 25 hrs into it. I played it for 17 hrs a year ago and then didn’t touch it for a year until lately.

I can buy Sniper Ghost Warrior for a cheap $24 now but I still got a lot of unplayed or barely played games. Like I bought Skyrim on sale a year ago for $30 and I have only 7 hrs into it. I hoarded so many new on sale releases and hardly played them, as sometimes I got stuck on them or lost interest.
One recent game that was totally worth it was Euro Truck Simulator 2, bought for $22.95 Gametap. I have logged 137 hrs into it, and it is my most played game. Check out my Level 48 game on it in Youtube: Level 48 Euro Truck Simulator 2 Gameplay TrackIR 5 - YouTube

Another recent game I bought that I’m playing now is The Testament of Sherlock Holmes – 66% off on 2-17-13 Steam for about $13.59. It has great modern graphics and it caught my interest as it’s not a common boring FP shooter, which I kinda got bored of because most FP shooters all have similar gameplay.

So how about you? Have you hardly played the many games you hoarded? How do you buy new titles – do you wait for them to get old or do you only buy them on a good sale?

As of 2-24-2013 I have 309 Steam games… How many Steam games do you have? I probably bought 98% of my Steam games when they were on sale. I probably have about 40 non Steam games on my computer too. And lots of games I didn’t install yet, maybe 35 of them.

I can wait until Diablo 3 hits $20, and MW3 should be a $20 game by now.

 

Depends on the game. I did buy MW3 for $13, and have not finished the SP and not played the MP. I did wait a bit for COD BO2, but did buy a discount key after I saw many people on my friend's list enjoying the game. I did buy BC2 and regret it. If I do pre-order a game, you can be sure it's not full price. Bought BL2 for $25, and the season pass for $15. You can find good deals usually.
- My most played games of past few months are Origin games though.

 

I bought Diablo 3 right when it launched and had a lot of fun playing it; however, looking back I think it would have been more fun (and less time consuming) to simply purchase it now

 

A little of each. I've picked up a few AAA games at launch such as Portal 2, Bethesda's RPGs and the Bioshock Series, but even the likes of Dishonored and Hitman: Absolution were 1/2 off when I got them.

 

Nowadays I usually wait for SP games to get cheap and usually all DLC'd out before buying. It's only been MP games that I buy at release, but even then they usually have some nice pre-order discount deals.

 

Most of the time I wait until the major release bugs are fixed (that management dictated were less important than launch). By then the game is usually on sale. There's also the games that I don't think are worth $60, period, so I wait until they hit the bargain bucket.

 

Agreed, that's usually the way I make my decisions. MP/Co-Op games are the ones I buy earlier on, but recently mostly co-op.

 

If I really want the game, I'll pay full price. But if it's something I can wait for, I'll just wait until it's on Ebay for $10. Seriously, half my game collection came from there and I got most of them for $10-15. Talking about consoles by the way.

 

It depends on the company. I typically buy Bethesda and Rocksteady games at full price. The rest have either disappointed me in some way or their games are simply poor quality. Blizzard used to be on my instant buy list but with Diablo 3...I'm still suffering from severe disappointment lol

 

Except for an occasional AAA game I've been anticipating I usually buy at reduced price. I refuse to spend $50-$60 on any game any more. None of them are worth it IMHO. And honestly, most of the time I enjoy the single player games, except for a few MP ones that I stick with. So if it's mainly for the SP gameplay, it's not worth $50-$60 for 8-12 hours of campaign. Few games these days offer replay value with the single player games.

 

Some games I just can't resist. Unfortunately for my bank account Feb and March are jam packed with games I really can't wait for. I preordered Crysis 3 (which I now regret as it doesn't run half as well as the beta did and is barely playable on lowest settings) and SimCity, Tomb Raider and Bioshock Infinite.

The rest of the time I just plonk interesting things into my Steam wishlist and when a Steam sale comes around I'll probably get the ones I most like the look of.

 

Last game I bought full price was Battlefield 3. Actually pre-ordered that for the Back to Karkand DLC. I had a good time with the game so I don't regret it.

But usually I wait until a Steam sale rolls around and I pick up games that are 50-75% off, never less than that (less meaning <50%). Which usually means I never get to play games on release, but that's fine with me.

 

ya, I still cannot believe I logged 300 hours into the nothingness called D3...

btw TL2 is everything D3 should have been, I know I suck because I didn't get it until now, but such a game for 20 bucks, you kidding me?

 

Feel almost the same way, except for multiplayer. Maybe it's because I am some sort of old hermit, but I play games for SP experiences. Occassionaly, I'll get hooked on an MP game like DOTA.

The only 3 games i have bought at launch in the past few years are Starcraft 2 (decent, don't regret it), Diablo 3 ( i just....i don't have the words anymore...sigh) and Borderlands 2 ( Love it )

I don't see myself getting a game at launch in the future, except for when BL 3 comes out.

 

I purchase about 2 or 3 games each year at full price, only those few games I've been eagerly awaiting for a long time.

The rest I wait to buy around 12-24 months after launch, whenever the Steam sale price drops below $10 for complete edition including all DLC. Then there are some games that I probably would never buy otherwise, but might pick up when they are on sale below $2, or some crap games that are bundled together with good titles in a huge publisher package deal averaging out to a few dollars per game.

 

I pretty much always buy games after they've become cheap. Preferably when there's also at least a half off sale, preferably three-quarters... half off is good enough if the starting price is low enough and I don't expect there to be a three-quarters off anytime soon, but pretty often I'll skip those in favor of a three-quarters. Once in awhile I'll pay the current price without a discount, but that's almost always when it's already $10 or less to start with.

I don't distinguish between single and multiplayer games. Of the three games I play semi-regularly that are primarily multiplayer, the release dates are 2003, 2006, and 2012... so by and large not new (and the 2012 one, Chivalry, still only cost $12.50). I also play at least one primarily single-player game in multiplayer regularly, but I bought it for the single player.

Last time I paid release price for a game? Probably Civilization IV and Age of Empires III back in 2005.

I've got sixty-some games in Steam, and a handful more from each of Amazon's digital service, Gamersgate, and Stardock Impulse, plus one or two each from Green Man and Good Old Games. I've got them almost all installed on my desktop with its 2 TB drive, but have only played maybe half of them, and half of that a significant amount of time. Maybe half of them are installed on my laptop, including at least one (Chivalry) for which it's officially below the minimum specs, but I play anyway.

 

Nice to see some other cheapskates out there, LOL. Just kidding. But I rarely pay full price for a game unless it's something I've really been waiting for (Skyrim, Kingdoms of Amalur were the last 2 I can recall buying the first day they were released). With games dropping in price so dramatically in just short periods of time, it really doesn't make sense to spend $60 over and over again for new games. Just wait a few months and you'll get them for half that price, sometimes even cheaper.

 

I rarely buy full price for games that are not AAA. most of the time I wait

 

I'm one of those who waits for the super-cheap complete edition. Aside from a couple Telltale game series, I'm not sure if I've ever preordered a game or bought a game at release. I've got so many other games to play that there is never any good reason for me not to wait until the game is $5 with all DLC. I waited a decade for Fallout 3 to release, I could wait three more years to play it. Same with Deus Ex 3, Max Payne 3...

 

That matters if you want to enjoy the game before anyone else, but if you are buying early you might run into problems, like crysis 3. That game crashes on my Pc every 30 minutes, if your lucky

 

Hard to not pull the trigger on new stuff, steam knows when my paycheck is deposited i think ;/

 

I usually wait for games to get cheap before I consider buying them. Considering that gaming is far from a priority for me, I can certainly wait for a good game to go on sale (and patched up as a bonus).

 

I wait most of the time, there are a few exceptions though.

 

Cheap and patched. Then again I don't play too many games.

 

Unless I have enormous interest in it (like Borderlands2, FarCry3, or XCOM:EU) I'm a cheapskate. I wait until -75%, or so. If it seems like bundle fodder, I'll wait for a bundle.

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