The Ultimate Guide to Saving Money on Gaming

The Ultimate Guide to Saving Money on Gaming

The beginning of 2018 is a good time to get a console. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo have relatively recently released new versions of their platforms, and there are more than enough games on each of them right now. The PS4 has plenty of exclusives and Japanese support, the Xbox has benchmark backward compatibility and 6 teraflops for multiplatform, and the Switch has a sea of indies, ports, and high-profile releases from Nintendo itself.

On the PC, by contrast, things aren’t so smooth. Cheaters in popular games are being banned by the hundreds of thousands, and the prices of major components, including graphics cards, RAM, and hard drives, have skyrocketed for a variety of reasons. Let’s say you’re good with a gamepad and are willing to endure that the shadows in the game will be worse than on a $2,000 PC. What’s stopping you from “moving” to a console? In addition, if you want to know where you can buy games, then I advise you to follow quora.com and find out all the possible ways to buy games. Most likely, the prices of the games. That is exactly what we are going to talk about today.

Regional Issue

The attitude to the cost of games is different from that in the West. Regional prices are to blame for this. Regional prices, rabid digital store sales, and piracy have made gaming a worthwhile investment. We live in one of the few countries in the world where it has been cheaper to maintain a PC than a console for many years. However, I will say right away that if you decide to buy a credit card for your games, Capital One is absolutely right for you. First of all, you may find out all the details about the card here https://dressthat.com/www-getmyoffer-capitalone-com-apply-for-capital-one-credit-card-offer-online/, you will find instructions for activating the card and the benefits of using it. Secondly, you will be surprised as soon as you find out how many bonuses you can receive just by buying games with this credit card. So, hurry up and read the detailed description of how to receive the card!

In recent years, however, this imbalance has evened out a bit. PC components have become more expensive – both because of the miners and the economic crisis, sales have become less profitable (developers have realized that huge discounts are hurting their pockets and have started to discount prices more modestly), and the fight against piracy is increasingly proving successful. In addition, Microsoft and Sony managed to curb the growth of game prices amid the crisis and the introduction of a tax on digital sales.

Consoles Come to The Rescue

More importantly, the picture on the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X is now very close to that of $1,000 or more PCs. Moreover, unlike PCs, consoles have almost universal support for HDR, a technology that affects perception far more than sharper shadows. Games like Shadow of War or Assassin’s Creed Origins run at 30 fps on consoles, but that shouldn’t put you off. In modern games like Horizon Zero Dawn, flat framerate and motion-processing technology (including in TVs) give such a smooth picture that you won’t even notice you’re playing at 30 fps. The days of the PS3 and Xbox 360, when the lag between consoles and PCs was gigantic, are over. Now multiplatform games look pretty much the same everywhere. And on consoles, there’s the bonus of expensive exclusives like God of War and Spider-Man.

Tips for Saving Money

Let’s imagine that you bought yourself a PS4 or Xbox One. How not to go broke on games?

1. Don’t buy something you’re not ready to start playing right now. There’s no point in getting two big games in the same day. Chances are by the time you get through the first one, the second one will already be heavily discounted. The desire to buy up all the releases at once will hurt your wallet. The same goes for buying a game before a trip abroad, a diploma or a session – buy it when you have time for it. Chances are it will be cheaper by then.

2. Only buy very popular games at launch. Wait a long time for discounts on Red Dead Redemption 2 or PUBG. So, it makes sense to pay for them as much as you can at once. Another way is Prey or Wolfenstein II. The less popular the franchise is, the more likely it is to be discounted.

3. Don’t pre-order with pre-pay before reviews appear. More often than not, game reviews appear before release. This means you’ll have a few days to pre-order and get all the perks you need. This tactic will save you from disappointment and support calls. Better yet, don’t pre-order at all.

4. Don’t be fooled by pre-order bonuses and “gold” editions. In Prey, you were given a shotgun for a pre-release purchase. Although you could find the same one, but a little less beautiful, by following the story – just a little later. The content from all sorts of “gold” editions often turns out to be useless decorative trash and has no effect on the gameplay.

5. Feel free to ask for your money back. If you change your mind about buying a pre-ordered game that has not yet been released, you should definitely contact support and ask for your money back. PSN and Xbox Live support usually does not refuse. You can write honestly – “the new promotional materials disappointed me. It’s also worth trying your chances after release – especially if the game is “raw” and there’s a lot of information about it online.

6. Find out how long the game you are interested in lasts. In current market conditions, the shorter the single game, the faster it gets cheaper.

That’s It!

The general conclusion here is very simple: if you want to play on a console and spend about the same amount of money on games as you would spend on a PC, you should give up the habit of buying up new products and putting them off for later. Millions of people are spending huge sums of money just to get access to a game 3-4 weeks before those who waited for the first discounts. If you don’t have the free time to go through all the releases, a console may be even more cost-effective for you than a gaming PC.