DevilRising said:
I would say, honestly, that a lot of it may well be that many gamers simply cannot afford to buy more than one console per generation. Or if they can, they get one as their "main", and then MABYE get a second console way down the road, when major price drops have happened. I know I personally grew up pretty poor, so we simply couldn't afford to get more than one system. And even in my late teens, when I had jobs and money to finally buy my own, I still couldn't afford to have both an N64 and PS1 at the time. In my adult years, I did, as my prior post mentioned, get a PS2, but not till I found one used for a really good deal, and when I got myself a Wii, I didn't actually wind up buying a PS3 until 2009, when those suckers were STILL priced at $400 (still the old fax machine model). So I dunno. A lot of gamers, especially ones with families and kids, but also many single peeps, just don't have the budget to support more than one console at a time, I guess. |
Like I said, I grew up poor. My game collections were not large, and a lot of my current collection for most of the above named consoles was actually acquired in the past five or six years. During the days of the fifth and sixth generation though, game renting was still a thing, and I had both a Blockbuster and a Hollywood Video reasonably close to me. I must have rented Super Smash Bros over a dozen times for my N64. My family was still doing okay at that time though, so I actually had a reasonable collection of N64 and PS1 games as well.
With sixth gen though, I rented a lot. Xbox, Gamecube, and PS2. When Blockbuster hit the point where they'd let you buy rentals for X amount more, it was beautiful. It was how I got Animal Crossing and Tales of Symphonia, to name two noteworthy gets. I would go somewhere like Hollywood Video with $20 and buy three or four used games. I actually got Super Mario Sunshine and Crash Bandicoot: Wrath of Cortex for cheap back in the day and still have them. Gamecube was kind of my main system, if that wasn't obvious. :p I still rented tons of games for each system though, because swinging $7 a few times a month for a rental was far more feasible than swinging $40+ a few times a month to buy games. It was just a matter of being resourceful and taking advantage of whatever little extra money cropped up when it was there.
During seventh gen though, unfortunately game rentals died, and a lot of my game collecting was relegated to gifting holidays and the annual birthday. That was when I became a more intelligent game shopper and started heavily researching potential purchases.
This generation, I'm just a self supporting adult, and since my game tastes have narrowed quite a bit the past decade, it makes it easier to buy the four or five games a year I'm interested in. I only bought in on a PS4 as early as I have because I had the extra money and wanted to stay up to date on this generation more actively than I was able to last gen.
Edit: I should add, this generation, it really helps that I recently became a reviewer on a paid site. It doesn't get the big AAA games yet, but I still get my share of noteworthy releases for free while only having to do what I like to anyways (play games and write about them).
