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It Gets Easier
In years past, I always experienced surprise when coming out of a holiday season sans holiday loot. Maybe it is because I’m older, maybe it’s because I have exactly two hours of “free” time each day now (in which I also have to fit chores), or maybe things like Humble Bundle and sales in general have spoiled me, but… it’s easier than ever to let things slide right on by.
My decision point this past Black Cyber Fronday was two-fold: PS4 or Switch. The PS4 had a lot going for it… sorta. There are basically five games I want to play that are PS4 exclusive, and two of them haven’t released yet. Given how the console deals have actually gotten worse over the years, it stood to reason that I could just continue to wait. All the way into March, if necessary.
The Switch is not something I talk much about here, which makes some kind of sense considering I do not own the machine. Nor any Nintendo console since the GameCube and the DS, really. I don’t have anything in particular against Nintendo, I just don’t have friends coming over to play games anymore. I guess Mario Kart and Smash Brothers can still be fun solo, but having the possibility of 2P, 3P, and 4P joining the field is what sets the value over the top. Without that bonus, you have a console that costs the same as it did three years ago and ports of Wii U games that grab headlines when they hit 50% off.
Despite all that, I was very sorely tempted by the Switch Lite when it was going for $163. I don’t have commutes in which I could reliably play it, or really even any opportunity to play at all that would not also allow me to play PC games instead. Still… how else will I ever experience Zelda: Breath of the Wild?
Then a thought occurred to me. “I know some Rent-A-Centers nearby. I wonder what they charge?”
Holy shit
Technically there is a non-bundle version with just the console for the low, low price of $19.99/week. Which might even be a “deal” compared with old-school Blockbuster prices back in the day. But holy shit, you guys, the fine print says that actually renting to own this bundle is $1,949.35 (65 total payments of $29.99). Meanwhile at GameStop, that bastion of charity, you can resell a PS4 1TB console for $150 store credit as of today. So, conceivably, buy a used one for $190 and even if you turn around and trade it in two weeks later, you’re getting at least as good of a deal.
Or, you know, continue doing nothing but playing the same games you were already playing for $0-$15/month. Sometimes analysis paralysis pays off.
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.
Do Nothing, Save Money
It’s amazing the value of doing nothing.
Recent Steam sale? Bought nothing. There are like 30 items on my wishlist, but none of them are particularly… buyable? For example, I have Sekiro on there but A) it’s a newer game that won’t see a deep discount, and more importantly B) I have no means of playing. I’m actually coming up on the end of my 4-week baby probationary period (i.e. paternity leave), but that just means a new reality of daily babysitting and the same lack of any ability to do much of anything after work still.
Recent Amazon Prime Day? Well, I did buy some house stuff because I’m a bleeding heart liberal that nevertheless enjoys next-day delivery of… let me check… 100 ft extension cords, razors, fish food, and USB chargers. More importantly though, I did not buy that PS4 Pro $300 bundle despite the fact that I was actually browsing Amazon right when it went up.
If I’m honest, it was less willpower and more dithering. “Surely I would play it! Totally different scenario from the PS3 I have hooked up next to the monitor I’m currently typing on.” “If I’m buying a console for no reason, why not a Switch instead? There are fewer Playstation exclusives I’m interested in, plus it’s portable when watching the baby!” “Yeah… but Final Fantasy 7: Remake.”
“…aaaaaaand it’s gone.jpeg.” “Success baby.jpeg.”
I have talked in the past about my digital hoarding predilections, insofar as it is more centered around avoiding paying MSRP. A good deal on a game that I want to play eventually is very enticing, because when the mood strikes, it strikes hard and turns any other game into ash in my mouth. This used to be a big problem.
Now? I have accepted my fate. I play phone games and browse Reddit for nine hours, then maybe play something equally mindless, like Fallout 76 or now Graveyard Keeper when off baby duty. Could I jump back into Divinity: Original Sin 2? Not really. I mean, I could play it, but I’d probably be interrupted every 30 minutes or so, and only have about two total hours in any case. When that becomes your gaming time horizon, your tastes shift.
I am hoping that things will eventually settle down. My child doesn’t sleep through the night, or even in a crib for longer than 15 minutes yet. I think babies are supposed to though? I have no idea. All I do know is that sometimes doing nothing is the correct answer, which just so happens to correspond to my existence at the moment.
Christ, I just want to sleep. And play videogames.
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.
Destiny Window
Unfortunately, I have missed the Destiny 2 beta window. Technically, I could still have picked the game up midweek and tried to squeeze in a few hours, but the GreenManGaming sale price went from -18% off MSRP to -10% by the time I remembered to check. That’s technically only about a $5 difference, but… Consumer Surplus, people. Fight for it.
The other complication is that I could technically purchase the game outright via the money I earned via selling WoW Tokens. It’s funny money, but I’m still averse to paying full price for anything. I would still plan on purchasing the next WoW expansion and a month or two to play it, and that is unlikely to go on a similar deep sale ahead of time. We’ll see.
All that aside, I do plan on picking up Destiny 2 on or around release. I have never played any of the original game or expansions, primarily due to not having the requisite console. I couldn’t even really tell you anything in particular about the game that caught my eye either.
If Destiny 2 is anything similar to Borderlands 2 though – which I believe it to be – then I will be satisfied with a outlet in which to shoot things in the face and collect its loot. Overwatch was supposed to be that outlet, but… not anymore.
Black… Wedthurfriday
The deals, they have begun. My own shopping list:
- | √| Far Cry 4 –
$15 (@Ubisoft);$22.50 Gold Edition (@Amazon) - | √| Dying Light – $20.39 (@Steam)
- |∅| GTA 5 – $26.99 (@GameBillet)
$35.99 (@Steam) - |??| Darkest Dungeon – $11.99 (@Steam)
- |??| Life is Strange (1-5) – $10 (@Square-Enix)
$13.39 (@Steam) - |∅| Divinity: Original Sin – no sale (?!)
- |??| The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky – $9.99 (@Steam)
- |??| Shadow of Mordor GOTY – $14.99 (@BundleStars)
Just to be clear, I’m not buying all these games. The ones with a green checkmark? Yes. Red circles are not good enough of a discount to purchase, and the question marks are, of course, question marks. This entire exercise is kind of superfluous given how I am still trucking through Fallout 4 (70+ hours), but hey, the less of a gap between mainlining high-quality entertainment, the better.
I may or may not update this post with additional deals as they catch my eye.
Edit: Life is Strange is $10 on the Square-Enix website.
Edit2: Apparently Far Cry 4 sale on Ubisoft went away. Amazon has Gold version up though.
Edit3: Ooo… GTA5 down sub-$30.
Devalued Steam Bucks
So this past Black Friday, I took advantage of two deals which, at the time, seemed to be no-brainers. First was a $50 Steam gift card being sold by Best Buy for $40. The second was the Logitech G502 gaming mouse being sold for $80… with a $50 Steam gift card thrown in. Pretty sweet, right?
Well… I’m now having a hard time imagining what I’d buy with this.
It’s not that there are no games I want to purchase on Steam, it’s that there aren’t many games I want to purchase from Steam. My Steam Wallet money isn’t going to pay for purchases on GetGamesGo, or GMG, or Amazon, or Square Enix’s own website, or Humble Bundle, or wherever else. When you limit yourself to just the Steam store, I’m finding that the value just isn’t there in many cases. Or at least not to the same degree. And it feels real damn silly to knowingly pay $2 more or whatever for a digital product you could purchase cheaper somewhere else with a similar number of mouse-clicks.
Basically, I am really hoping that this year’s Christmas Steam sales are extraordinarily good, lest I feel dumb for locking up my dollars in Steam’s storefront specifically. Which is a scenario that would have been outrageous even a few years ago.
In An Age 
Xbox Game Pass
Dec 18
Posted by Azuriel
As you may have heard from other bloggers, the Xbox Ultimate Game Pass is an extremely good deal. Even if you do not partake in all the Xbox Gold shenanigans – purchasing cheaper game months and then upgrading them to Ultimate via this $1 deal – it is kind of a no-brainer. I looked at the list of available games that I might be interested in and… well, see for yourself:
Will I be able to complete all of those games before my three months are up? Probably not. I can barely complete a goddamn dungeon in whatever game I happen to be playing at the moment. However. Just the fact that I’m playing The Outer Worlds for $1 is enough to justify everything else.
As an aside, I was initially thrown off by the advertised “$44.99/quarter” price once this $1 thing runs out. Then a calculator showed me that that’s $15/month. The PC-only “beta” version of the Game Pass is advertised at $5/month, “marked down” from $10/month. Everyone knows I am downright cruel when it comes to pinching pennies, but goddamn. People were talking about how Stadia was going to change gaming forever, but the Netflix future for gaming is already here.
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Tags: Deals, Netflix, Subscription, The Outer Worlds, Xbox Game Pass