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2PS4 or Not2PS4
There’s a $200 PS4 bundle around for Black Friday that comes with:
- 1TB PS4
- God of War
- Horizon: Zero Dawn Complete Edition
- The Last of Us (Remastered)
As I sat here pondering whether this would be the year I finally buy a PS4, I vaguely recalled having spent time thinking about this very subject previously. Many times previously, in fact.
In 2018, it was $200 for:
- 1TB PS4
- Spiderman
- 20% off PSN coupon
In 2017, it was $200 for:
- 1TB PS4
- $50 voucher
It is debatable as to whether the deals have been getting worse. Three games is more than one game, but all three games can be purchased for $10 apiece this week and only one of them is actually physical, e.g. has resale value. Which can’t be all that much, given that it can be bought new for $10.
One might question why this is even a thing for me. Clearly, I have resisted whatever urge I had for a PS4 two years running. It is even to the point that the PS5 is coming out next year, and it will be backwards compatible with PS4 games. So, again, what’s the point?
Well…
The FF7 Remake is releasing 3/3/20. A PS5 will be coming out 8+ months later at best, and then I’m in the position of purchasing a brand new console at full MSRP to technically play one PS4 game. I mean, I want to play God of War and Horizon: Zero Dawn too, but you know what I’m saying. Is a full-price PS5 a year from now somehow better than just buying a $200 console this month and then playing what I want to play as it comes out?
I dunno. Maybe? Technically the PS5 will have better load times (SSD) and will essentially be like a PS4 Pro (but obviously better). At some point, I may as well wait for the PSX, amirite?
In any case, considering I wrote this post instead of pressing Buy, I think this decision has since been made for me – looks sold out everywhere now. Again. But for posterity’s sake, the list of actual (exclusive) PS4 games I would want to play would be:
- FF7 Remake (future)
- Last of Us Part 2 (future)
- God of War
- Horizon: Zero Dawn Complete Edition
- The Last Guardian
…and that’s it. Huh. I have a few “free” games on my PS+ account (Nioh, Detroit: Become Human, Heavy Rain), but just listing these sort of puts things in perspective.
Black Friday Haul
I spent a grand total of… zero dollars on games this Black Friday.
Looking back, I am oddly comforted by the fact that I missed the $200 PS4 deals. Again. I have no interest in Spiderman, and simply selling the unopened game was asking a lot. The 20% off coupon for PSN stuff was more tempting, as was the $9.99 complete edition of Horizon: Zero Dawn. And all the other implicit PS4 exclusives.
At the end of the day though, I had to ask myself what I would be doing had I purchased it. The answer would be: still playing Fallout 76. So I didn’t.
Also, yes, I saw that just about everyone was selling Fallout 76 for like $35, nine days after release. On Reddit, there were some people saying that Amazon was actually accepting returns on the empty case, but I did not feel $15 was worth the hassle. Besides, I actually like the game, so… you’re welcome, Bethesda.
I guess I did technically buy something though, earlier last week: a Samsung 1TB SSD for $127. I have been juggling hard drive space for ages now, and it has prevented me (on occasion) from playing a game I might have wanted to in that moment, simply because I had uninstalled it to save room. So, I very delicately hooked everything up, moved my Steam installation to the new drive, and promptly started re-installing all the things. Which included ARK (130+GB) and a bunch of other games that are probably bigger in GB than they are in hours of playtime.
If I get a wild hair up my ass to compare Fallout: New Vegas and/or Fallout 4 to my Fallout 76 experiences though, I merely have to click the icons now.
All that said, we’ll see what happens around Christmas. I noted the following prices this past week:
- Dishonored 2 + Death of Outsider ($21.59)
- Prey ($13.49)
- Final Fantasy 15 ($22.49)
- ARK DLCs ($26.31)
- Fallout 4 Season Pass ($18.18)
- Divinity: Original Sin 2 ($29.24)
Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Far Cry 5 discounts weren’t yet good enough to make the list.
Full Circle
I saved almost $400 this Black Friday! By… not buying anything, thanks to bots.
Truth be told, it might not actually be due to bots, but I have my doubts. Specifically, both the GameStop $199 PS4 + $50 voucher deal and the Kohls $199 PS4 + $60 voucher deal were sold out by the time I got up on Thanksgiving morning. I am sure there are still technically $199 PS4s floating around (Edit: Looks like a no), but considering those vouchers were almost the equivalent of all three of the PS4 games that I would have played, I’d rather take my wallet and go stay home.
Then again, maybe it was all normal people pulling annoying arbitrage bullshit like WoW AH goblins. Out of curiosity, I went to eBay to look at the current listings of things.
Seriously?!
WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?! Both the clueless idiots still capable of navigating eBay but un-savvy enough to not look for deals with a simple Google search, and the swindlers preying on them. This is all a prime counter-example to show whenever someone tries to win an economics argument with the assumption of rational consumers. We are all irrational as hell.
Alas. Perhaps this entire episode is doing me a favor by not enabling me to buy three $20 PS4 games at technically $86 apiece. Even if I had gotten the voucher, they still would have been the equivalent of $66. In almost all other cases, I would prefer to play games on my PC, which already has a Blu-Ray player. Now, I may have eked out a bit more value from the free games from PS+ each month, but considering that my PS3 has gotten zero use in the last year, that’s still debatable.
I also passed on the Honor 6X for now. It actually went on a flash sale for $145, but in the process of looking at it closer, I realized that I bought my Honor 5X back in June 2016. Seems a bit silly to buy a new phone 1.5 years later when my current one is still functioning at 100%. People spend way more money on new iPhones every year, but those people are irrational.
What I did end up picking up were Far Cry 4 and No Man’s Sky, for about $13 and $20 after discounts, respectfully. I’m still on the fence about Destiny 2 at the moment, but I might take the plunge with some of my $90 in Blizzard credit from having sold WoW gold a year ago; I should still have enough for the next WoW expansion since Destiny 2 is on sale. That should be enough, right?
…right.
Wishlist
Black Friday and the frenzied consumerism of the holidays is close upon us. It’s probably a bit silly to be thinking about buying more things considering I have more Steam games to last two lifetimes, but… Capitalism, ho! Here’s what I will be keeping my eye out for:
- Playstation 4 ($199 + $60 Kohls Cash)
- Final Fantasy XV
- Horizon Zero Dawn
- The Last Guardian
- Huawei Honor 6X Phone (< $150)
- Steam Games
- Far Cry 4
- Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
- Divinity: Original Sin 2
- Oxygen Not Included
- NeiR: Automata
- Dead Cells
- Salt & Sanctuary
- No Man’s Sky
- MMOs
- GW2: Heart of Thorns & Path of Flame
The PS4 purchase is probably the most excessive of the bunch, considering how infrequently I have used the PS3 since purchasing it five years ago. Of course, I didn’t really have a good setup at the time – projectors are cool, but sitting down and pressing a button is easier – and things have changed since then. There is a certain symmetry in how I basically bought the PS3 for The Last of Us, and The Last of Us 2 is one of the driving factors for a PS4 purchase (albeit a few years from now). If/When I end up getting Destiny 2, it will be on PC though.
Phone-wise, I’m in the stereotypical “my phone works, but there’s a better one out there” pinch. My SO’s phone died a couple months ago, so I of course created a Google doc comparing all the different phones available to map out the best bang for the buck. That’s when I realized the upgrade potential between my 5X and the 6X: +600MHz processor, +1GB RAM, +16GB storage, and +340mAh battery. Is that worth $180? Ehh. Is it worth $150 or less? That’s much closer, especially considering how much gaming I do on my phone.
The Steam list is a bit eclectic, but they are all games that weren’t on sale, not on sale far enough, and/or not out of Early Access yet. No Man’s Sky is a bit odd on there considering how much negative press it has received over the last year, but the last sale had it at $24. If it hits $15, I feel like it’d be an easy decision for a kinda-sorta temporary Minecraft experience. I have certainly made worse purchasing decisions.
Finally, the MMO section is just GW2. There have been a few Heart of Thorns sales for $15 that I have missed, but I feel like we might see a combo deal better than the original $50 set. I’m sure there will be yet another sale for the FFXIV expansion too, although every day I become less and less interested in the supposed great plot in the game. If your call to fame is a great story, but the only way to get to said story is to spam dungeons… yeah. No thanks.
Gray Friday
I’m getting into a weird place when it comes to sales. This past Black Friday consisted of…
- Shadow Warrior ($5)
- The Banner Saga ($5)
- Logitech G502 Proteus Core Optical Gaming Mouse Black + $50 Steam card ($80)
I do not anticipate anything worthwhile happening on “Cyber Monday.”
There were indeed deals on games I technically want to play. I have heard good things about AC4: Black Flag, for example, and it was discounted down to $20. The problem I have – and arguably always had – is the fact that it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to specifically purchase a game if I’m not going to play it right away.
My “currently playing” list in the sidebar hasn’t be accurate for a while simply because I find myself cycling through games much faster these days. Cycling either because the games aren’t grabbing me (and I’ve finally acquired the intestinal fortitude to just abandon un-fun games) or because they end up being short, 5-10 hour experiences. While I am glad to finally start working on my backlog in a more serious manner, it also means there isn’t much motivation to drop $20+ on something right now.
There was no discount on Warlords, which means I didn’t purchase it either.
SOE technically had a Double Station Cash sale on Friday, but I resisted that siren call as well. Primarily because I was miffed that I had used my Walmart SOE card about a month ago after holding onto it for all of last year (it’s a 1500 SC card with a bonus 500), and I wasn’t about to physically go to Walmart on Black Friday to pick up another. There was that reason, and the follow-up to what I would actually spend SC on these days. PlanetSide 2? The upcoming H1Z1? EverQuest Next, released 20 years from now, or whatever? I can wait.
And that is really what it all comes down to these days: I can wait. There’s an indie game on my Steam wishlist called One Way Heroics and it was discounted down to $0.87. Didn’t buy it. Why? It would make the inevitable Humble Bundle it is a part of that much less of a value. Same with Not the Robots, currently 75% off at $2.49. I am not actually that cash-strapped that it matters in a financial sense, but the question I always ask myself is “do I need this right now?” The answer used to be “No, but I might want to play it later when it’s no longer on sale and I’d feel dumb for letting the deal go by.” These days, the answer is more simply “No.”
Besides, worst-case scenario: just wait a few weeks for another sale.
In An Age 
Sorta Black Friday, 2025 Edition
Dec 1
Posted by Azuriel
I started writing a list of games I had an eye on at the start of the holidays, and it has since passed me by with nary a thing purchased. At least, not from this list. Regardless, here it is for posterity:
On reflection, it’s pretty much just a list of every mainstream game released in the last 5 years. My actual wishlist is longer, but I sometimes forget that Steam doesn’t consider Black Friday to be a real holiday – most everything was not on sale, as it would normally be during the Winter Sale, for example.
What I did end up ordering this “holiday” season were technically two more Switch accessories. First was the 8Bitdo Lite 2 controller ($21), as a smaller controller for the Little Man. The normal Switch joy-cons sorta work for his hands already – using just one when playing Mario Kart 8, for example – but honestly I don’t like them all that much. If I want him to get more coordinated and better at videogames, getting used to a somewhat more “real” controller makes more sense. Plus, worst-case scenario, the controller itself works on Android devices.
The second item is the GameSir G8 Plus ($49 AliExpress), which is a telescoping bluetooth controller. While it can work with phones and even smaller tablets, the primary use-case is the Switch itself. There was a cheaper, Switch-specific option available, but again, I’m all about accounting for worst-case scenarios. To date, I have not played the Switch outside of Little Man co-op sessions in the living room, which means no Breath of the Wild (etc). If I’m being honest, I do not anticipate this purchase immediately solving that issue, but at least it eases some of the (future) potential friction.
Aside from all that, I am just continuing to quietly play Guild Wars 2 and Outer Worlds 2. Once the latter is finished, my plan is to move onto the last (hopefully) 10% of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, so as to free up 154 GB of space. After that… who knows. Baldur’s Gate 3 is right there. Death Stranding, too. Red Dead Redemption 2 as well. Or, you know, all of those Switch games I was talking about earlier.
Oh, or maybe Expedition 33! It is on Game Pass already…
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Tags: Black Friday, Consumers, Controller, Sales, Switch