Unless it is a game I really want to play or say a Nintendo game as those take years to drop in price or is on Game Pass day one I tend to wait at least few months before buying games as many you can get half off fairly quickly.

Halo 3- best game i bought at launch
turning point: taught me to wait for game reviews

I 100% agree with this (esp with digital).

Often games launch with serious bugs, and down the line they get fixes ect.
Ontop of that, if you have a backlog of games anyways, might as well play some of those titles first, and wait for a sale to happen before adding more.

More often that not, this is the way to go.
Unless your hype levels are maxed out, and you just NEED to play that new release asap.... then dont buy day1.
(needs to be noted, I dont care about competitive online games)

Side note, is if its a limited print physical copy.
Like at some point, it'll be hard to even find a copy.
If its a popular title, that you know, will soon be in a bargin bin, same advice as above, wait abit.

With BG3, I bought it day1 to support the devs.
Sometimes I feel like this is justifiable as well. Like I dont want devs that go the extra mile when makeing games, to not also benefit from doing so.


Okay.... so overall I guess there are a few times when you can break the rule.
But overall, "It Doesn't Make Sense to Buy Games at Launch".

This the industry itself needs pre-order and a good bunch of full priced releases to even survive. Especially now that pretty much every AAA game costs over 100 million dollars to make and another 50 million to market. Good luck making that back when a sold game only makes about 10 dollar of revenue and you have to substract royalties, shipping cost, taxes etc.

No, it doesn't make sense. Let alone preordering.
Save for some select cases, at launch you will get the most inferior product at the most expensive price. Delay gratification, and over time you will get patches to polish the game and the price will start to go down.
I get that especially young people need to jump on something when it's hot and all their friends are into it, they don't want to feel left out. And Youtubers and such need to pounce on new releases right away to capitalize on them.

It used to back in the day when certain games would appear on shelves and permanently disappear by week’s end. Especially true if you lived in a place like I did where 50%+ of your purchases were imports.

But digital completely changed the game and took out that stress of traveling all over the place in a time sensitive very short launch window to get certain games. Nowadays, I tend to buy games only when I’m ready to play them, or if there’s an irresistible sale on a game I will probably want to play soon—I used to not resist those sales by the hundreds, but I resist a lot better these days.

I dont think they are conditioning people to wait.

Its more that they are rushing to get a product out as much and worry about features that they dont think are high priority later to be patched in.

Square Enix is a big culprit of this.

I have not bought a single game at launch in the last 15 or so years, and I cannot think of even one good reason to do so going forward, apart from if for some utterly baffling reason that's the only way to actually get the game in the first place. That has yet to happen once, so it's extremely unlikely that I will buy any games at launch going forward either.

I can understand the argument for waiting to purchase games.  For many games, it feels like a cash grab and then a couple months later you can get the same experience at a much reduced price.  Or, they will release a special edition of the game at the same or lower price, including dlc that initially cost additional money.  If the games we want are going to be $20. less or include extras if we wait a couple months, why not play the backlog in the meantime, and pick it up when it is a better value?  It certainly seems like a no brainer.

I most often purchase games at release just to support the developer for bringing out a high quality title.  If it is something I want, I'm just going to get it no matter what.  In the case of most Nintendo developed games, they may never see a discount, so if I am going to purchase it I may as well do so when it launches.  I really prefer when bonus content, either in physical form (collectibles) or in game (skins etc), is included as incentive/reward for pre-ordering/purchasing day one.

At the end of the day (as someone else already alluded), a quality video game (even at full price) gives many more hours of entertainment value than say the cost of going to the movie theater or out to eat.  When looking at the cost of fun/challenge per hour, a full price game is a bargain and well worth the cost of admission.

I think it is a case by case basis, but I voted agree. I do think there are certain games I play at launch, but they are very rare. The last game I got around launch was Elden Ring. For the vast majority of games I play, I can wait to play it later.