In your opinion, is gaming an expensive hobby or a cheap hobby?

Where would you place videogames? Is it an expensive hobby?

  • Yes, it's in the "expensive" hobbies bracket

    Votes: 161 40.9%

  • No, it's in the "cheap" hobbies bracket

    Votes: 233 59.1%
  • Total voters
    394
Danjin44 said:
I both play video games and build Legos & Gundam Model Kits and both are way more expensive than video games.
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It's complicated...

It depends:
  • If you are one of those idiots who preorder digital games as if they'd run out and buy all extra editions and dlcs.
  • If you buy your games while they are new and full priced, and fell to the "game as a service" trap of buy new "expansions" and "battlepasses" every few months.
  • If you avoid getting your games new and are ok playing games a year later for a fraction of the price.
  • If you just pirate all your shit and don't give anyone a dime.
 
If you don't mind playing at 1080p@60, you can get a decent PC for not much more than a console and PC games can be found for cheap.
 
Just spent over £100 for 2 day period last week taking my kids to a play area, the cinema and to a pub for food during their school holidays.

Puts £70 for Mario Kart in to perspective when I'll be playing it for 7 years.
 
kiphalfton said:
Yeah I can only imagine any car enthusiast spends an ungodly amount of money on their vehicles (whether modding, restoring, racing, etc.)
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I used to race cars locally. I have no idea how I used to afford to do that.


That being said, gaming is getting more expensive and I am afraid it is going to push some people out. It's not that I am worried about what I can afford but more about pushing out those that can't. If costs keep getting higher for consoles and PC gaming, I would expect more people to move toward mobile gaming. Most people (even the poors ;)) find a way to have a phone.
 
reinking said:
I used to race cars locally. I have no idea how I used to afford to do that.


That being said, gaming is getting more expensive and I am afraid it is going to push some people out. It's not that I am worried about what I can afford but more about pushing out those that can't. If costs keep getting higher for consoles and PC gaming, I would expect more people to move toward mobile gaming. Most people (even the poors ;)) find a way to have a phone.
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Yup. Path of least resistance. Not everyone will gravitate to PC or mobile just because they got one, but it helps some people transition over who arent gonzo over consoles or pricey GPUs.

It's like calculators, and for you old timers remember when the net was new and if you wanted to use the net you had to buy something like Netscape at stores for $50? back in the day people bought this stuff.

But why buy calculators (even if they are only $10) when your PC or phone can do the math and MS included IE for free? And that turned into all browsers being free from that point on. When consumers are offered a good option free or easy to use, a lot of people will just do that route.
 
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It can be expensive.

If you want a monster PC then you're paying a four figure sum.

However, if you could also just buy a Series S for £250 and sub to GP, which is relatively cheap.

It's certainly cheaper than some hobbies. I looked at some 40K models for painting purposes only. I was shocked at the cost. £100 for a single 17cm tall plastic model. I'd then need to fork out more for paints, brushes etc.
 
As far as hobbies goes it is cheap. Woodworking, fishing, off roading, basically any outdoor/sports based hobby is crazy expensive in comparison. Unless you are whaling in Gacha.

I probably have barely spent 10k lifetime. There are people that drop that annually on boat or RV payments.
 
I still think it's one of the cheapest hobbies, it just also provides options that can be really expensive if you have FOMO on AAA releases, or spend a lot chasing graphics.

Otherwise, the games themselves are quite cheap if you wait for discounts, buy AA to indie titles, play retro stuff, or throw in the better free to play titles.

Back in college, I just took the cheapest route where I needed a PC for schoolwork and 3d rendering, so it was just cheaper to build a PC that could do that and game at around $1000. Used it for 5-6 years, only upgraded the HDD, and consoles I usually got through gifts or using money from holidays for them. I'd probably have to tack on a bit more for the GPU now, but otherwise wouldn't change much unless you want the shiniest production values.
 
I do competitive shooting as my main hobby. One competition can cost as much as a Switch 2.
And that doesn't count the thousands of dollars in gear it takes to get there.
And that's to compete with the "poors" lol.

Gaming is insanely cheap if you're talking about console. And relatively cheap over time if you count PC gaming.
 
Cheaper hobby than my teenage years when trying to buy games for the Genesis/SNES. Standing in Toys R Us and seeing Phantasy Star IV with a $90 price tag(over $180 today) was a real kick in the groin. I also liked the Koei strategy games which were $70+ usually.
 
Extremely cheap. You can get a used PS4 Pro for under $200 and buy a bunch of games for $10 bucks or less. For PC gaming, you can get a gaming laptop for around $500 with a 4050 card and play a ton of games which usually goes on sale from a place like Steam.

As others have pointed out, this hobby is extremely cheap compared to others.
 
I think dollar per hour of fun I'd say "cheap" in the long run.

Some big games I've gotten bundled, on sale, yada yada. I'm a patient gamer.

Launch prices will always be the biggest entry, but if you wait a couple of months, your game will probably be cheaper, and probably be more "fixed".

Some things will always be a day 1 though , maybe... those CAD Nintendo Switch 2 prices got me choked up tbh. I was able to snag Mario Odyssey on sale "pre launch", so I'm gonna be on the hunt for some deals before I jump in think.
 
Gaming's one of the cheapest hobbies you can have. You want new games? Buy them, play them, resell them for 5$ less. You don't need new games? Buy PS3 or PS4 games. You can get 1000 hrs of playtime for around 100$. Games have become ridiculously big. There's tons of F2P games out there. Buy used games.

I try to spend less than 200€/year and since PS plus and Gamepass I don't even have to miss new games…
 
It's super cheap if you want it to be. For example, I bought a 2nd Switch used for $150 a few years ago and a Pro controller for $25. I often wait for sales on NIntendo games or buy them used. And resell them when done. Buy Nintendo eshop cards when 20% off or more. You can keep costs very low.

You can also spend $10k on a pc every few years and buy 40 $60+ games a year if you want.
 
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Gaming can be as cheap or as expensive as you want it to be.

You can spend $500 on PC put together out of used/older parts and play older games as well as emulate up to PS3/X360/WiiU/Switch just fine. You will have tens of thousands of games to chose from.

You could also spend $10K on new PC build every couple of years (and all the consoles) and buy $100-150 special edition copies of every game and also play that off a $10K TV with $5K worth of audio equipment.

So really it depends.
 
For me it's pretty cheap. But I don't insist on buying every game and I am console only, so no $2000 video cards for me. I do buy every console though, including the PS5 pro. I spend more money on my other hobbies.
 
If you don't go full re... uhh, I mean, FOMO/AAA, it's definitely cheaper than most hobbies, at least right now (gaming used to be crazy expensive 30 or so years ago, due to prices and rapid obsolescence). You can buy a 2nd hand laptop with 5-year-old tech and subsist entirely off sales/bundles; it would cost you less than a fully-painted Warhammer (regardless of variant) roster. And most physical hobbies usually require owning a car, which isn't always a given, depending on which country you live in. Ex. inflatable kayaks with dropstitch construction (improved rigidity) have become surprisingly cheap, but it's not realistic to hike with a big-ass heavy rucksack on your back everywhere you want to paddle.

And that's before the piracy angle. If you're willing to further spend 60 euros on a Chinese emulation handheld, and torrent some old 16-bit era games (on the aforementioned 2nd hand laptop), you have hundreds of hours of gameplay waiting for you.

The only other time gaming was as cheap was in the mid-00s, when people were outright throwing away DOS- and Win95-era systems (ironically, the same ones fetching eye-watering prices today), since they were not XP-compatible. And, thanks to the likes of Kazaa, eMule, DC++, torrenting etc. you could get hundreds of DOS games for nothing.
 
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atyourservice said:
Cheap games or lower specced consoles don't really tell the full story though right?
Doesn't include the peripherals and display, at minimum.

On top of electricity and internet costs, that entry level games cost easily takes you over the cost for a used beginner bike, or a pair of shoes and water bottle for hiking, or the vast majority of board games ever. Basically more than all hobbies typically considered "cheap".

Imagine you moved to a new apartment after losing all your things in a house fire(and somehow losing access to all your digital accounts and past purchases). After working hard for months and saving some money, you decided to relax with a new hobby. Would gaming still be a cheap hobby to you?


Yes, you have a point that it's good time value in terms of enjoyment per cost, but I think people are underselling how much it really costs to get into games.
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lol. Why stop there? I mean you can't play a pc or home console without a house. Why not add that cost in too? If you stop eating you will die and can't game, better add in the cost of all your meals too.
 
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Yes and no.

It's all relative to figure out what's worth your money and time.
There's simply way more nuance to such a question (and answer).

For me personally, I generally find games expensive. I buy them anyway, because the ones I decide to get are worth it for me. Quality is good, genre I like, good gameplay, good graphics and so on.

F2P games aren't worth my time, yet they cost anything if you want to play. So it works the other way around too.
 
For me it depends whether you want to play everything or just casually play one game here and there.

IMO most people complaining about prices are those that want to play in more than one platform all or almost everything that releases mostly out of FOMO because don't want to feel left out of hype train, so they overspend in gaming just to "be part of something", in that sense gaming is expensive because they're most probably filling their backlog out of full priced games.
 
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Other hobby, such as toys are more expensive these days.
Game is product which You can play for years, while Toys like You bought it and see it for seconds, and then it goes to shelf.
and the price of toys now is more than $50 each (figurines)

because I once collecting Toys, I see Game is cheaper now
 
Banjo64 said:
Just spent over £100 for 2 day period last week taking my kids to a play area, the cinema and to a pub for food during their school holidays.

Puts £70 for Mario Kart in to perspective when I'll be playing it for 7 years.
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Yup.
Just ordering home-delivered pizza or Chinese food for the family cost me about the same as a game. That's 20 minutes of entertainment.

But I also built and upgraded PCs the last 5 years for more than $10,000. Could've kept playing on a 1080ti rig and 1080p screen but I wanted something better so here we are.
 
When one of your other hobbies is higher end home theatre, then no, gaming is pretty inexpensive 🙂‍↕️. Especially if you do a lot of it.
 
As a pc gamer primarily, short term pain equals long term gain. I'm still running an i7 6700k, 32gb ram and a 1080ti I bought in 2016! It cost me close to 2 grand back then but its still more than capable of playing everything I throw at it at very respectable levels @ 1440p. So hardware wise, €200 a year and apart from brand new releases pc games cost practically nothing.

I already own them but I was looking at gg deals a few nights ago and could have bought for example Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered, Little Nightmares 2, Half Life 2 and FEAR for about €8. That's ridiculous!
 
Half of my games o my Steam Deck are free or almost free, the other half is games costing me less than 15$. I only paid one game full price (Baldur's Gate 3) so far

So yeah, super cheap hobby
 
It depends on what level you engage in the hobby. Once you get past the hardware, which has various options at different pricepoints, how often are you buying games and at for how much? I've gotten exceeding good at not buying games full price or even half 99% of the time. Like, the last time I paid over $50 for a game was probably 1 or 2 Switch games .

Otherwise I couldn't tell you the last time I paid more than $20 for a game. I have games on wishlists for years until they get to $10-15. Don't get caught up in FOMO, don't need to be 'part of the conversation' and mostly single player so it doesn't matter when I buy the game( vs a multiplayer game where the game has a peak engagement window before inevitably tapering off.

I would say I barely spent between $100-150 on games last year. I bought new physical copies of Silent Hill 2 and Final Fantasy 7 remakes for $30 each, Robocop Rogue City and Terminator Resistance Steam for under $20 each, The Forest and Tormented Souls Steam for $3 total, and some Vampire Survivors DLC. So far this year the only game I've bought is Chrono Trigger and that was because it hit $3.74 Steam, so no-brainer to have a cheap digital copy( also own SNES and DS versions). The only games this year I'm looking at are Marvel Cosmic Invasion, Ninja Gaiden Ragebound and Terminator 2D No Fate, all 2D sprite games I'm expecting to land in the $20-30 range and I'll probably wait till the first Steam sales for those. Gonna wait and see with Switch 2( didn't get hyped from the direct), and nothing else that comes to mind is nipping at my wallet that badly for a 2025 purchase ( no I'm not getting GTA6). And whatever else is of general interest can go on my mile-long wishlist with all the other games that will get bought whenever they get bought.

Then balancing that out with retro emulation, and I would have to go out of my way nowadays to spend huge sums of money on gaming. Grabbed myself a Legion Go last summer on sale and I basically do 80% of my gaming on that device. My PS5 is 90% use PS4 backlog titles.
 
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It's such a broad hobby that there is no right answer. Just like other hobbies.

Are you an artist but what you like is to just make drawings with pencil? Then it's cheap. Do you do oil paintings on canvas? Then it's expensive.
 
It's one of cheaper hobbies.

My dad likes to be fishing…. Tiny outerboard engine alone costs at least 5k…. The. All the equipment, small boat. It adds up.
 
It's pretty cheap. Unless you want the very best pc parts and buy every AAA an AA game that comes out day one, then it honestly is pretty affordable.
 
I've time fortunately to play The Nintendo Switch, PC and Xbox, so the simple answer for me is no, it's not expensive. If more playing time to me means earning less then it's definitely an expensive hobby.
 
You can pretty much scale from f2p shooters on a potato PC or used console all the way up to nvidias latest, VR and custom controls/cockpit setups.

Depending on your personality you might have more fun with the free game.

It's as expensive as you want it to be.
 
BlackTron said:
You can pretty much scale from f2p shooters on a potato PC or used console all the way up to nvidias latest, VR and custom controls/cockpit setups.

Depending on your personality you might have more fun with the free game.

It's as expensive as you want it to be.
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"As expensive as you want it to be" is the perfect way to sum it yeah, you can pick up a very cheap PS2 with the cheapest games you could think of and enjoy games for very cheap or just get a 5090, running the latest games at 4K on an OLED 4K screen. However, I do agree that if you go to the higher standards, it's definitely a more complicated and way too expensive hobby.
 
When I was younger and I wanted to play every game I possibly could It was an expensive hobby. Since games today aren't very good, I don't buy very many of them. I tend to play one game for long periods of time and then go back to games I've played before that I love.. so it's much cheaper than it used to be.
 
Gaming is a very cheap hobby for the most part. Anyone who complains that gaming is expensive hasnt actually had an expensive hobby.

The only hobbies that are cheaper are the ones that require physical exertion as a major component, eg: sports.
 
As a console gamer- to me, its cheap.
I have a Pro recently and buy all consoles. I get whatever interests me- sale or not.

My other hobbies take the cake. One of them being an automotive enthusiast or being into cars. 2 Corvettes and 2 Jeeps mean very expensive- seems like everything is $1,000.

Im also into shoes, which is more than games aswell.

Cameras, home theater setups, and home modifications (garage)
 
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AV said:
You can get old used hardware and games dirt cheap. Or buy a new console and only play F2P. Gaming's as expensive as you want it to be.
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This. Gaming can be dirt cheap or extremely expensive which is something a lot of hobbies don't have the luxury of.
 
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Bond007 said:
As a console gamer- to me, its cheap.
I have a Pro recently and buy all consoles. I get whatever interests me- sale or not.

My other hobbies take the cake. One of them being an automotive enthusiast or being into cars. 2 Corvettes and 2 Jeeps mean very expensive- seems like everything is $1,000.

Im also into shoes, which is more than games aswell.

Cameras, home theater setups, and home modifications (garage)
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bro, I'm with you. I'm into cars too - thats my main hobby. I budget $5k every year just for maintenance. All these people complaining about a $30 stand for PS5 Pro must drive beaters lmao.
 
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