I have been with every year accumulating an increasing catalog of games to play. Which made me hold out on buying games longer and longer. Eventually I realized buying games 1-2 years after launch is way better. Not only the game has better performance, but also all the DLC for a fraction of what someone at launch payed only for the broken vanilla version.
Also, the fact that I wait 1 year to buy/play the game, when the hype is already gone makes easier to reassess if the games is really worth playing, after the blind hype of critics have diminished. So not only I save on money but I also save time, which can be used for better games.
Not only that, sometimes we get remasters less than 2years after the original. And some story DLCs gets released so late, that the people that preorder experience a incomplete product, which if they don’t remember to go back and play (and now pay more), they may never experience.
But in the end, I assume I am not alone, and many others saw this trend of increasing returns on waiting and never preordering, which in turns makes for a reduction on publishers and developers profit per consumer. Which in turn makes they need more DLC next game they develop, to increase the profit per consumer. Which creates a vicious cycle, where with each launch, consumers are conditioned to not buy. This creates a disjointed reality where what is being experienced by players and what is on the gaming news is not the same.
I understand that it makes sense that games become cheaper with time, not only because old tech is always cheaper, but because the publishers want to attract each tier of paying consumer at their highest value, while the game is still relevant, thus increasing rate of this consumer acquisition.
But the pace of which is happening this devaluation of the gaming software seems unprecedented. Games with 2 months lose part of the MSRP, after 6 months this MSRP get on sale and you just need to wait for another 6 months and the DLC will be bundled with the game together with a sale that makes the game worth scrap.
Not to mention unreliable factors like ps plus, humble bundle, live , uplay freebies that appears from time to time, that always create and illusion that your next purchase could be regreatable if it becomes freebie next month.
Is this model sustainable?
