It hasn't. I've only bought ~4 games at full price the last decade, now I just wait for them to be around $20. The $70 price seems to be more focused on cashing in on people that buy on release, but prices go down all the same only like one year after release.
Games that have fallen to $20 also have the nice advantage of having most of their bugs worked out and the vast majority of the balance passes complete. It's easily the best time to buy and play a game.
I was very and am very tempted to get baulders gate 3, as all the good reviews and bg2 is one of the first pc games I remember playing with my dad. But still, I have not bought a new game at 60 in close to a decade.
There's nothing coming out AAA these days that's worth the price of admission or pre-ordering. Blizzard hasn't made anything worth playing for years, I don't give a shit about the yearly reskin of Call of Duty, Starfield was a try before you buy with Gamepass - it really feels there hasn't been anything in years worth getting at full price. Even Baulder's Gate, which I would consider worth the full price, I picked up below average price prior to official launch.
I'm underutilizing my rig tbh. I've been playing primarily Factorio for the past few years. My monthly game spending is low. Tempted to get a steam deck for mobile Factorio with mods, though.
Just started playing Starsector. My rig isn't some obnoxious beast....but like Starsector doesn't even have a recommended cpu. You only need like 1gb of ram and a gfx card from over a decade ago.
Given that AAA games have become very samey, I have found myself drawn to more interesting titles from a plethora of other devs. These titles also have the nice advantage of almost never costing anywhere near $70 on release, not that I tend to buy them on release, I just add them to my wish-list while I buy something cheap that came out earlier.
Hard to say, because none of the games with that price tag so far have piqued my interest in getting them on release in the slightest. If anything, it's surprising how pretty much all my favorite games this year (Hi-Fi Rush, Talos Principle 2, Cocoon, Jusant) were available on release for just ~30€.
Good AAA games are rare these days. If there's something I want from them I can it buy 2nd hand or during a sale. Been having the time of my life with indie games for so long now I can't remember the last big title I bought.
I've never bought a $70 game and probably never will. $60 was too much for me. I think this is the point where I continue to just step out of the mainstream gaming field.
Recently, if it's through Steam, I haven't bought hardly anything. And the last things I've bought were either under $20 or on sale for under that price. Otherwise, the most expensive game I've bought in the last year was Pokemon Violet. Otherwise I have bought some used old games from a nearby shop for a cheap enough price.
Though I do have plans to buy some indie games on my Steam list, some of which I first pirated and played, when I have the money because I'd much rather my money be going towards those indie devs than [insert soulless multi-million dollar company #3859].
Given how the quality of new releases and zero new games being worth the price, I have not bought a new release in over 10 years, maybe 12 years. I can't justify the price vs. what companies have been putting out.
I haven't purchased games on release day for a LONG time, unless it's a game I just simply cannot wait. Everything else is on Steam for 75-90% off.
There's really no point. Nearly every game launches these days completely broken. They have a ton of DLC or "special" editions for $150 CAD, and overall it's a shit experience.
Buy that shit for 75% off, complete edition, and full of bug fixes (or mods that fix everything).
No, I still wait 1-2 years and buy them for a few € at at least 70% discount. I can wait... Like horizon zero dawn costs 11€, hogwarts legacy 33€ or starfield already at 40€
For the last few years it has been in < 5€ / month territory for me.
This is due to many AAA games not doing it for me in the first place and others being broken and unccompleted at release. And then I just wait a few years and pick them up in a sale - and it works out great every time.
Case and point - Cyberpunk. I still haven't bought it but I hear its actually good now. I'll wait a bit still until they CDPR really finished it.
Hasn't changed a bit. I NEVER buy games new with maybe two exceptions being Fallout and Metal Gear, but even then I found good deals on them so I still didn't pay full price. Every single game that looks like I might want it goes on my isthereanydeal waitlist and I don't buy it until it's at least 50% off.
There are very few games I've bought at full price. Baldur's Gate 3. Elden Ring. Dark Souls 2 and 3. Those were all worth it. Most things I'll just wait for a sale. My friends don't really play a lot of games, and rarely all want to play the same thing, so I don't have that peer pressure problem.
I can't even think of anything that exciting coming out soon.
I just realized that I have bought 2 games at full price in the past decade., Elite Dangergous, and BG3.
I did back Wasteland 2 on Kickstarter in late 2013, but I think it was like $20.
I wouldn't say it has. I don't buy too much these days anyways as I already have a backlog, and there's so much out there that I tend to buy things on sale that have been out for a while.
I'm willing to buy a higher-priced game or DLC on release, but it better be damned good. I'll wait a bit before buying to at least ensure that it's playable on day one.
MONTHLY spending?! If you’re having to budget for monthly video game spending, you and I are very different. Do they have you on the hook with micro transactions or something?
I spend less than before. I used to not buy keys from third party stores, but now I do. I always bought on release, full prices, but now I don't care any longer if they get my money. The few indie devs that care, sell for less and with less greedy tactics, they get the full money on release or early access.
Everything from Ubisoft/EA/Blizzard is pirated because they deserve no money anymore, they are shit companies that should go bankruptcy.
And even for the few I bought, I might go gamepass now. I regret that I bought a key for Starfield and Cities Skylines 2, should've not trusted them. I'll not pay for their next games/dlcs as I first have to get my money back I spend on them.
I also started to give way more negative press to friends and online, now that games got more expensive I expect better quality. It's an easy deal.
Of which only Warhammer and BG3 were bought on launch, are the only games I've bought since 2016. So roughly 1 game per year, and mostly on discount. Launch price could be 200 USD for all I care, I don't have time for trying out new games all the time.
There are so many old classics to be played, and too many mtx ridden, unoptimised Unreal Engine AAA games being published for new games to be enticing.
I dipped out when games jumped to $60 CAD sometime back in the XBox 360 era iirc. (For context, games are $80-90 CAD now.) Since then, I've bought maybe 4 or 5 AAA games total.
That era was also when indie games exploded onto the scene. These indie games were/are better than most AAA titles, and way more affordable, so it just made sense to pivot.
Other than they ongoing payments for games I continue to play (hello, World of Warcraft), most of my money now goes toward games from smaller studios that aren't so expensive. Valheim, Timberborn, and many others are well below $70, and now I get to try games from other creators while still affording the couple of big spenders I enjoy.
The only thing that this harms for me is multiplayer experiences. It means that only people willing to pay that high price during economic hardship will be able to play multiplayer stuff that isn’t 2-4 years old. Imagine spending $70 on call of duty. Nope you say. I can wait you say. So you do wait until next year and it’s on sale for $45. You bite the bullet. And guess what? Now you get to come home and play a game that has players who have been playing for a year. Or hackers. On a game without content updates. It’s an awful experience and I’m happy there are plenty of games not asking that full price.
I bought a couple of newly released games that I would have bought if they were $60 or $80, but other than that, I have been getting my gaming on with cheaper games that are worth the price, like Talos Principle 2 ($30, and worth every penny), as well as older games, like Outer Wilds, Inscryption, Stray, Hades, Spiritfarer.
EDIT: I will add that every game that I have purchased for the full $70 has been worth it. Starfield, Hogwarts (family never played more than 2 hours each), Last of Us Part 1 (haven't finished), TOTK (haven't started it yet).
@alessandro I’ve always bought the majority of my games during sales or used from websites like eBay, so it doesn’t affect me that much. I considered buying Persona 3 Reload at launch, but I’ll wait for a sale since it’s $70 and SEGA games tend to go on sale pretty quickly.
My backlog is still triple digit (Though it has gone down noticeably over the year.) so I only really buy on the summer and winter sales unless something really catches my fancy.
You can use https://gg.deals/ to see all the keyshop prices at once, and can log in with your steam and gog accounts to sync wishlists. I have bookmarked views for $5 or less, and historical lows.