Half Of PC Gamers Wait For Sales To Buy

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I don't know about you but this statistic seems just about right to me.

NPD Group finds 37% of US plays PC games, but cautions price drops have created expectations that could limit spending. Steam sales and pay-what-you-want bundles have helped make PC gaming more affordable for players in recent years, but they might also be stifling revenues in the market, according to
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+1 Gamers or anyone, everyone wants to keep more money in the wallet
 
Of course they're stifling revenues... but they're doing so mostly for AAA title companies, for smaller indie developers they're a god send, while yeah they're not getting as much but they're selling to so many more that it's not funny.

That said, maybe PC users have been burned too many times by day 1 purchases? Maybe we don't need to have the game this fucking second because we have a back log of other games never played?
 
Only half? The other half needs to get with the program... :D

Seriously though, there is virtually no reason to pre-order games or buy games at full price these days. Most of the games' quality doesn't even warrant it.
 
Last two times I paid full price was for Fallout New Vegas and BF4. Both were buggy pieces of shit when they were released. Maybe they could release a better product than expect me to beta test their shit.
 
We got tired of buying shitty games, shitty games that do not work, and great games that do not work at launch so we decided to wait for the devs to fix their shit before we buy.
 
MavericK96 said:
Only half? The other half needs to get with the program... :D

Seriously though, there is virtually no reason to pre-order games or buy games at full price these days. Most of the games' quality doesn't even warrant it.
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Truth, especially since most AAA titles don't get working correctly until they're already on sale. I occasionally do buy games at full price, but not all. Before I drop $50+ on a game, I'll likely have played a beta extensively, read reviews and researched to see what issues may arise. If it passes all those hurdles without any major stops, I may bite. But so many AAA titles just don't cut it.

Publishers need to worry more about the quality of their product, and less about people waiting for sales. If you make a bad-ass game whose servers don't crash on day one, and works with multi-gpu and/or multi-monitor when applicable, you bet I'll be throwing money at it. If you release a watered-down console-port that barely works with single gpu configurations, yeah, you're not going to get an overwhelming response out of an enthusiast customer base.
 
I don't pay for betas. So, I wait until things are fixed. By reading various forums and news posts, I'm doing alright. Tons of bugs, unplayable, etc.. When it's finally fixed enough to be playable, it's on sale. So, win/win for me. I get a finished game and a sale price.
 
CrazyRob said:
Truth, especially since most AAA titles don't get working correctly until they're already on sale.
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And many AAA games come out months and months after they do for consoles, so we're not getting some exclusive first play at the game. Me preorder GTA5, how long has it been out already? Yeah, I'll pass, maybe buy it when I have some free time to get into the game, and hopefully that'll be when it's at least 50% off.
 
It's a catch-22 gamers don't pay full price because developers release buggy shit games. But developers release buggy shit games because they don't have the money to fix them. So one side has to budge and from the looks of the last 5 years or so the games aren't getting better.
 
Well, games rarely work well at release, tons of DLC get released to milk you, and usually I can't play right away anyways. So 1 year later you get a multiple-patched GOTY version which has the DLC which should have been part of the game to begin with and it works! (Mostly)
 
What, the industry expects that every potential buyer will buy music at full launch price? Everyone will see every movie they are interested in while it is in the theater at full price?

So why expect every gamer to buy at launch MSRP?

I buy one or two titles at full price per year, the rest I get on sale. Seems just right.
 
Sales are the only way I can afford games.. I'm glad for them, in a day where you pay $50 for a half done game that is completed through a series of $20 a piece DLCs you'd wind up paying over $100 for most games at full price.
 
I think they wait to see if it's a turd.

Later, when they see it on sale, they check to see if there is a strong odor that remains and if not, they buy :D
 
Uh, duh? Last year CoH2 hit the shelves/steam for $60 plus various DLC. Six months later I picked up the base game for $13.50. The expansion came out this summer at $20. Still waiting for that to drop 75%.
 
Stop spending half or more of the budget for a 3A game on marketing and put it into actually making a good properly bug checked game.
 
yea, there's really no reason to pre-order games especially after being burned by a few notables from big publishers (except for real indy titles but they tend to be affordable anyways).

one example: DNF (more like "Duke Nukem wish it was ForNever"...*smh*)
 
Parmenides said:
DLCs have driven me to wait.
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This is exactly why I wait. I'm just not willing to spend $60 on a game and then have them nickle and dime me for stuff that should have been in the game to begin with. I have multiple items vying for my entertainment dollars. I have XX dollars as an entertainment budget and a list of things I'd like to do or buy. If your item is doesn't compete on the price vs. value scale then my money will go to something that makes more sense.

Sales make them money despite this article's griping. At $60 + extra for DLC's I'll spend the money on something else. At $30 with DLCs I'll give a game serious look. Unless a game is really old, it's age doesn't come into my decision - buying it day of release or 3 months after release doesn't mean a thing to me. If an item doesn't align favorably on my price vs. value scale I just won't buy it. I'm only concerned with relative value of purchase, it's really that simple.
 
Really? Most of those sales are digital. Costs nothing. What they lose in price per unit they make up in volume. Just about every PC oriented 'gamer' here likely has a backlog and not a tiny one either. There was a period when this first started, I couldn't resist a sale because before then game prices would stay way too high for a long time. There are some games I've bought that I'll never play.
 
Typical business thinking to blame the customer.. The issue is that less games are 'must buys' not that half of gamers wait for sales.
 
It's not that I'm not willing to pay full price. It's just that by the time, I finally finish the previous game, the new one has already gone on sale.
 
m heisty said:
It's a catch-22 gamers don't pay full price because developers release buggy shit games. But developers release buggy shit games because they don't have the money to fix them. So one side has to budge and from the looks of the last 5 years or so the games aren't getting better.
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Actually it's not a catch-22 at all, it's cause and effect.

The cause is that developers release buggy & incomplete products that has chunks cut out of it so the devs can sell it separate as DLC, with the result being that gamers stop giving away to in effect best test part of a game.

Do you really think EA didn't have enough money to properly finish BF4? Seriously?
 
I don't believe this at all.

If this were true DLC wouldn't be the norm.
 
Same as everyone else here. Why buy a game at $50 or $60 and then have DLC on day one or within the first month. Wait 6months to a year after the DLC has been released and the game is on sale with all the DLC for half price of the original game price.

I remember getting Dragon Age: Origins Ultimate edition for around 50% - 75% off a year or two ago.

The only games I have paid full price for in recent memory was the Demon Souls, Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2 games cause I really enjoy them. Oh and Shovel Knight. :)
 
I was going to come in and say "No really?!" but it is kind of obvious. Why pay full price? Sure it helps the company and what not. (or should) but in this day in age a couple dollars could be making it to work or not.
 
yes, i do because of DLC and game breaking bugs at release. i just wait for the complete and fixed edition.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that just basic economics?

People are only willing to buy goods up to a certain price point where they'll otherwise choose to wait to buy the product at a lower price. If your product isn't perceived to be worth the price, people won't buy it at that price. $60 is stupid to pay for something that is very likely to be broken on release, patched a number of times, and then never really be 'right' until years later when we all have machines powerful enough to run your poorly written piece of software. We recognize the trend.

Nice to see people voting with their wallet.
 
I have very little time to play games. I work and have a family. I'm playing games from 5-7 years ago that I never had time to play.
My computer can run these just fine, plus I picked them up during a Steam/GOG sale dirt cheap. I honestly don't care about new games right now - my backlog of games is ridiculous.
In addition, the games are usually patched and pretty stable by the time I get around to them.
 
m heisty said:
It's a catch-22 gamers don't pay full price because developers release buggy shit games. But developers release buggy shit games because they don't have the money to fix them. So one side has to budge and from the looks of the last 5 years or so the games aren't getting better.
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No, the cases where the studio runs out of money are rare. The much more common occurrence is the game needs time to be fixed, but the shareholders of the company want their money NOW, they don't care if the game isn't ready yet. This is going to happen again and again for any company (the majority) that has a total divorce of people who focus on the money v. developers that actually care about the games.
 
The discounts are so heavy we'd be stupid not to wouldn't we? Unless they rework their prices to start lower and stay there for a while that's what we've going to do isn't it?
 
EA actually thinks they deserve full price for battlefield 4 on launch day. :D

I even think the $35 I spent on it was a waste, let alone $60
 
I'm busy and life is expensive. If I buy a game for $60 it's probably going to be worth $10 by the time I get around to playing it.
 
Why pay full price for a lesser experience? Why pay full price to be a BETA tester? That's exactly what I get every time I buy a game on release. Especially as an AMD multi GPU user. Most PC games are buggy unoptimized console ports that were rushed out the door. We've all had enough being treated like shit by these pubs and devs...
 
canna said:
This is exactly why I wait. I'm just not willing to spend $60 on a game and then have them nickle and dime me for stuff that should have been in the game to begin with. I have multiple items vying for my entertainment dollars. I have XX dollars as an entertainment budget and a list of things I'd like to do or buy. If your item is doesn't compete on the price vs. value scale then my money will go to something that makes more sense.

Sales make them money despite this article's griping. At $60 + extra for DLC's I'll spend the money on something else. At $30 with DLCs I'll give a game serious look. Unless a game is really old, it's age doesn't come into my decision - buying it day of release or 3 months after release doesn't mean a thing to me. If an item doesn't align favorably on my price vs. value scale I just won't buy it. I'm only concerned with relative value of purchase, it's really that simple.
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I grabbed Mass Effect 2 day one and enjoyed it, but then they wanted to nickle and dime all the DLC's to complete gaps in the character's stories. I saw that others ended up paying less and having DLCs. "Hmmm, I must've done it wrong". So I stubbornly wait for a deal on DLC's. Apparently I missed the one time it happened. Waiting for those ME2 DLCs deals kept me from ME3 before news of how bad it turned out. It was just icing on the cake to know that I avoided those issues. I find it always more rewarding to hold off now. And when a company wants to make pre-order exclusives... it just makes me more mad. I find reasons to stay away from the game when it comes to that.

I'll still get some day ones and pre-orders of interesting games if I think the dev is trying to take a risk on something ground breaking for the love of the game (and not the money). That or if they are making the type of game I want to see more of in the industry.
 
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