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?

I'm not sure if it's sustainable, but it's what I've pretty much always done. Most games that I buy are at least ten years old. I also never buy DLC nor pay for online, so companies don't really make that much money off of me. However, when I can choose between 1 game for $80 or around 10 over games for that same price, I'll almost always go for the latter.

I have a pretty simple formula with games to know if they will devalue quickly.

Mid to high third party western releases tend to be fastest to drop from $60. For example just recently I got Rise of Tomb Raider on PS4 for $25 just a few months after it released. I knew this was going to happen the second it was announced so I waited for the inevitable sale. I fully expect Mass Effect Andromeda to drop quickly. I got Mass Effect 2 & 3 for $10 each a year after release.

Meanwhile my enjoyment of niche Japanese games is bit of a crap shoot, sometimes they clearance them out, sometimes they hold or even increase in price. Been burned both ways.

I also tend to wait til price reduction. But the main reason i dont rush myself to buy a game is the possibility of goty or remastered version.

Also it's so easy+cheap to rent games nowadays

Wait a year or two and get the goty edition on sale. That is the cheapest way to buy games but you don't stay current. Model doesn't work for multiplayer heavy games because by the time you get the game most people moved on or only hardcore people that have been playing the game a lot are online. So if you play multiplayer then it isn't that good but if you don't give a fuck about multiplayer besides offline then waiting is supreme. I picked up a copy of CoD:Ghosts (which apparently had terrible online according to most people) for 5 dollars on 360 for a friend. He is enjoying the offline with friends and bots. Hasn't even touched the story yet. Can't beat the playtime he will put into the game for only 5 dollars. 

I buy maybe 2 games per year at release. Most others a few months to a few years old.

I never pay full retail price for games, under any circumstances. New games I purchase from Best Buy, for 20% off, or find them on sale elsewhere. Older titles I usually buy used, either at GameStop or on Ebay.

I don't buy full priced games. And you don't have feel bad for it. It's the market that has to adjust, not you.

Unless it's a Blizzard game. Apparantly they never seem to reduce in price. x.X

I always prefer to wait. Not because of the price itself, but because I know it is a terrible business to buy a game that it`s not one year old. In one year you get the same game with all DLC on disc ( or almost all) and patched, while buying on release you have to pay full price + possibly have day one patch + buying season pass or other bullshit. After one year you get the real game, even if the discount itself isn`t that great.

As a consumer, I don't really care. If a game costs more than I'm willing to pay for it, I'm simply not going to pay for it anyway.