Found the article via my daily read on [H]ardOCP. The basic principle is its best to wait on agame as opposed to purchasing it at launch. I immediately recoiled when I started reading.
A few weeks ago I was able to get a new copy of Assassains Creed 4 for the Wii U, for like $11 @ TRU. It was a great deal, and much better than the $60, my wife was going to spend to get it for me at launch.
But all games, hell MOST games that have real replay value don’t fall into that ‘hole’ - to me at least. Over the past decade, I’d say the majority of my gaming hours have been logged on games such as SF4 or CoD or UMvC3 and even D3, the comment node between all of them is a strong experience with other players. I’d say the game I’ve spent the most time on before that was City of Heroes - an MMO based on being a superhero. All those games either have you going AGAINST other people or working with people that you know either outside of the game or have met inside of the game.
If I followed the logic of ‘waiting till it’s on sale’ - I’d never get to enjoy these games. For me? Picking up a fighting game after it’s not ‘new’, always leads to a feeling of dissatisfaction, I’m always playing catch-up. I haven’t bothered with USF4 because I didn’t bother with arcade 2014, because I barely played 2013, because my time on Super was cut short being a first time dad. I ‘want’ to get USF, but I know I’l lget my ass whooped and most likely won’t enjoy it enough to warrant the purchase outside of just wanting to support the community so to speak. CoD is no different, when I bought AC4, they had BO2 on sale for $11 ALSO at TRU, but I said ‘naw’. My wife asked why and I told her, I play CoD for multiplayer, I’d get curbstomped if I tried to catch-up to folks now and would be better served just buying the new one (its the same thing with titanfall). One would argue the single players is worth the cost, but its not what I really want out of a CoD.
Then it comes back to what the article is actually hovering around - Diable 3 and hte recent ‘next gen port’ being the best version. I didn’t play launch D3, but I did spend a significant amount of time within a couple months of release - it was still full price when I bought it. so I hear ‘best version’ and ‘I should have waited’ and I couldn’t disagree more. It’s as if there was no fun to be had with the previous versions. Sure, the loot system needed TONS of work, but I logged so many hours because it was still FUN. It may not of had the replay of D2, but that didn’t make it only worthy of a purchase at $20 or when the super mega hyper version came out on XBone/PS4. This extends to the fighting game community too with the hatred that spewed forth for UMvC3, people upset that a new game/expansion came out less than a year later, but there was this disconnect as though people didn’t get their $60 out of the first 8 months of gameplay.
I paid $16 to see the latest Transformer movie. So seeing like 4 movies is the cost of one full priced video game, that’s maybe 12 hours of ‘watching’ something compared to however many hours were logged playing something. I’m all for trying to get a good price on a game, hell I don’t feel a large portion of games that cost $60 are worth $60, but you’re only cheating yourself by adopting a wait and see approch with most/all games.
- :bluu: