5 Ways to Game on the Cheap

$60 game prices, $600 consoles, and a whole smattering of overpriced accessories.  Gaming is not a cheap hobby.  However, with some planning, and a little change in behaviour, you can spend a lot of your time playing games without breaking your wallet.

The most cost effective way to play games is to focus on at most a few titles at once, spend a lot of time playing them, and finish them to completion.  This way you play and enjoy the games you own without having them collect dust over years.  Once you get out of a collector mindset the following steps are easy, and will save you a lot of money.

 

1.  Rent don't Buy

The average playtime for single player non-RPG games is in the 10-20 hour mark.  This is short enough to beat the game within a 1-week rental period.  And yes, rentals are way more expensive now than when we were kids, but you have to remember that renting is still a lot cheaper than buying.  Rentals are also a great way to introduce new multiplayer games to your friends. 

If you rent a game and it becomes one of your favourites there's nothing from stopping you from buying it.  This is especially true with online rental services such Gamefly and Gameznflix.  Online rentals are really great because you're not under any time obligations, so even if you pick up a game like Oblivion that'll take you 2 months to complete, you're making effective use of your subscription.  But remember: the more games you play within a month the better use you're making out of the service.

Sometimes the online rental services don't satisfy your instant gratification because you live too far away from a distribution centre, but you can still get a similar service at your local Blockbuster.  Ever since Blockbuster introduced their No Late Fees policy you can treat their rentals as being a month long.

This site has a list of the best online rental game services.

Here is a list for Canada.

 

2.  Buy, but Sell Too

Maybe you don't want to rent for whatever reason, I personally don't like doing it.  However, buying games can just be another more freeform way of renting if you sell your games after you're done with them.  The key to selling successfully is two-fold

1. Don't sell to stores like EB and Gamespot unless they're running a trade-in promotion
2. Don't wait too long so that the game becomes worthless

If you're selling games you need to know how the trade-in market works.  Just like most things in life, the longer your hold onto a game the more its value depreciates.  There are some exceptions like rare titles that increase in value, but it's difficult to know which game will follow this trend, so there's no point in banking on it.

The depreciation on games usually isn't linear either, but instead follows large jumps, the key is to sell of the game before its value jumps down.  There are a few events that occur to make a game jump down in trade-in price

1. sequel is released
2. official price is lowered
3. sudden influx of trade-ins, which usually happens when the game becomes part of a bundle
4. 3 months have passed since the game released (for unpopular games)
5. 6 months have passed since the game released (for popular games)

If you buy a Splinter Cell or Tony Hawk game that has yearly versions, don't wait for the next version to come out before selling your copy.  If you've had the game over 6 months so it's already experienced a price drop, at least get rid of it within the next few months so it doesn't experience another jump down.

 

3. Buy Used

Ebay, Amazon are both great sources for cheap and used games.  If you're part of a forum, especially a gaming one, there are often buy-and-sell discussions or even whole discussion areas, take active part in these and you'll get some great deals.

There's no point in selling a game to Gamespot for $35 and then having someone buy that game for $65.  You could have sold that game directly to the person for $50 and you'd both be better off.

One of the stigmas against buying used games is that a lot of time the games aren't kept in good condition, there's scratches on the disc, weird sticky parts on the manual and the case is all marked up.  I'd like to take this moment to implore to my fellow gamers to take better care of your games.  If we all treated our games well, then we'd all feel a lot more confident in buying used games.  Japanese gamers are famous for the immaculate condition they keep their games, and often times you can't tell the difference between a new and used title.  It should be the same here in North America.

 

4.  Video Game Deals!

There are tons of deals happening all the time, whether online or in retail stores.  The best sites to stay on top of game deals are CheapAssGamer, FatWallet, and in Canada RedFlagDeals.  Fat Wallet and Red Flag Deals both have a lot more deals than just video games and are fantastic sites to check on regularly.  Cheap Ass Gamer deals mainly with video games and are usually the first source for any kind of deal.

Other than those websites there are a few permament deals with certain retailers.  Fry's Electronics, which only exists in California, often sells brand new 360 games for $45 instead of $60 on the day the game releases.  If you don't have a Fry's very close to you, you can always price match at a Circuit City or Best Buy.  Best Buy also has gamer gift cards, these are gift certificate cards for gamers with the benefit that any game item purchased with the card over $20 gets $5 off.  Well, that just means instant $5 on any game item, just put the money on the card first, and then buy the game or accessory with the card to get $5.  For $20 things like Greatest Hits titles, it can be quite a significant amount of savings.

Another lesser well known fact is that sometimes games can be had for cheaper when imported.  This is definitely true with Xbox 360 and importing from asia.  It works like this:

• Pick up an Asian or Japanese 360
• Buy Asian versions of games from Play-Asia for $40.

Both of these things can be purchased at Play Asia.  The best part about this is that most asian versions of 360 games are in English, and you can play American games anyway.

 

5.  Just be Patient

If you can get over the excitement of owning a game when it first comes out, then the longer you wait, the cheaper the game becomes.  Right now you can pickup a PS2, Gamecube or Xbox and spend the next 5 years playing a ton of great games for ridiculously cheap.  Not only are the games cheaper, but you have the benefit of picking the best games of the past generation.  Istead of paying $150 for each individual Devil May Cry game, on October 24th you can pick up DMC1, DMC2 and DMC3:SE for $30.

Of course you don't have to take it to this extreme, as you can see that most 360 launch titles have undergone price drops, and Microsoft is introducing the 360 version of Platinum Hits where the games will retail for $30.  Ridge Racer 6 (which is one of my favourite racing games ever) can now be bought for $20!