IMO, this gen more than ever, encourages you to wait a bit to buy your games. Other than the first 2 years of this gen, almost every single game will get a pretty substantial sale within a month of release, at least here in the United States. So for someone to buy a game day 1 would mean playing the game a month early is worth the extra $20 or even more.
This is moreso true over the past year. Very often games are discounted to $45 at launch if you preorder them. Games that fall way below expectations will hit sub $10 within a few months(dragon age 2, brink, duke nukem).
Even "GOTY" games can be got at ridiculously cheap prices(batman arkam city for 10bucks at bestbuy only 6 months after release(though that may have been a mistake made by bestbuy). Bought portal 2 new for $30 in gamestop the week after it came out.
So this gen which games have you bought day 1, full price, and did you regret buying any of them for the full $60, $50 or $35 pricetag?
I personally have bought
halo 3: Worth it since i spent over 1000 hours playing it and I don't believe it got a substantial sale for a long time since it was selling to nearly 50% of the 360 install base during its initial year.
elder scrolls V: Skyrim. Also worth it, enjoyed it a lot. Had I waited 3 months I could have got it for 40bucks, but this game has avoided sales a lot more than most recent games.
and I have diablo 3 preordered for Day 1 purchase and hopefully won't regret that desicion.
I haven't bought any handheld games at launch, though I have bought a few at full price, as the big nintendo ones hold their price for a long time, and gotten a few full price games as birthday/christmas gifts though not at launch. Call of Duty 4, left 4 dead, bioshock. And I think I bought GTAIV for full price, though a weeks after it came out.
When I thought about it, I was quite shocked that I had only bought 2 games so far at launch considering last gen I preordered and got over a dozen gamecube games day 1. Probably due to how mediocore this gen initially was, and then how fast everything went on sale later on.
