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[SickBoy]

I thought I'd throw out a provocative topic tonight, and this is it.

I was at the store the other day, looking at racks upon racks of games, and with the market the way it is right now, sports games seem to be the only genre with a compelling reason to "play now," seeing as they're generally released as their respective seasons begin and there's that real world tie-in.

Meanwhile, in other genres there are just so many games that are great deals, it almost seems wasteful to buy the latest, greatest game for full price when you can get two excellent older games for the same price. There are probably a few exceptions in huge releases like Halo 2 and other such titles that are hard to resist or aren't going to go down in price for a long time, but all in all, it's not a long wait for a game to hit a good price.

Is there a great reason to buy new games in other genres, other than to stay current with internet message boards?

-SB

 

[GhaleonEB]

On the contrary, why pay full price when you can get pretty much the same game from the previous year for a few bucks?

Sports games are the ultimate contradtion - they offer tons of replayabilty and yet you're supposed to buy a new one each year. I tuned out of them around 1993.

 

[Mike Works]

NHL2K5 is worth full price because;

It's arguably the greatest hockey game ever, and it's easily the greatest 3D hockey game ever.

At full price it's only $19.99.

It's online supported with exhibition games, leagues/seasons, tournaments, and even mini games.

That's all you really need to know.

 

[Shinobi]

Sports games are easily the most replayable games out there, even more then racers for me. So yeah, they're worth full price.

 

[Broshnat]

I totally disagree with your argument.

Sports games should be budget price. Apart from a slight change of the stats and teams etc, they are the same game year on year on year!

Something like Metal Gear, Mario, Zelda etc are totally different games with each installment. How can you compare the two situations???

 

[Shinobi]

I'm not saying what they should be worth. I'm simply saying what they're worth to me, in relation to other games. If you ask me any game priced over $30 is a ripoff, but I live in the real world so I know that isn't going to change.


And as I said, I know I'm going to put hundreds of hours into particular sports games. The games you mentioned, I finish them once and I'm probably done with them. How's that more valuable to me? But it's all about what you get from a game, and what your own perceived value is.

 

[Broshnat]

Yeah, I wasn't referring to your post particularly anyway- it's the original topic I'm talking about...

 

[Kiriku]

I don't see how sports games, of all games, are the only games worth full price. It's the total opposite for me...since the sports games from last year have a tendency to resemble the sports game released this year, at least for someone like me who doesn't pay much attention to the small details in gameplay and whatnot when it comes to sports games. It's definitely worth waiting for a price drop for sports games, because they usually come pretty quickly since the best before date is usually 1 year.

Original and fresh games, games with lots of new and exciting gameplay, games that been in developed for a couple of years that I'm really looking forward to...that's the kind of games really worth full price IMO. If the games are really good too, of course.

 

[dog$]

Good reasons to buy non-sport games at release:

· Gives context for discussion among friends, instead of everyone else talking about Game X and you cupping your ears whining "omg don't tell me that Aeris dies", etc.

· Keep up with competition. Currently, there are two ways to ensure you can beat your friends at SF Collection or the like; buy the game now and practice, or murder your friends.

· Fulfillment of personal desire.

· Buying the game now might be cheaper than waiting for eBay premiums down the road.

· Full developer support. This gives you the added bonus of having a base in pointing your finger and bitching at people when they ask why a sequel to such-and-such hasn't been made.

Meanwhile, waiting to buy used/old sport games might not be the worst idea since a) you know a large quantity of the games will be discarded for trade-in/etc when the new one is coming b) rosters change, teams and rules don't; unless you absolutely need to be current with your sports title there's no reason to buy new (given the gameplay in older titles isn't inferior) except, of course, for the reasons listed above.

 

[SickBoy]

There's definitely the "why don't you buy last year's" argument to be made, particularly for people who aren't huge sports fans. But if you get a lot of play out of your sports games, it makes sense.

But I don't believe you "have to" buy a game every year. Madden seems to be an every two years proposition for me, for example.... and I've logged well over 100 hours with 2004 so far (I'm still on the fence about 2005). Given the gameplay value that that represents, why not buy the newest, most tweaked and balanced version when I'm ready to buy again?

And then there are the ESPN games, which are a great value.

-SB

 

[Scottlarock]

sega's nfl 2k3 was only 3.99(used) at eb... I almost bought it just to have

 

[Docpan]

Fight Night ... Dude, that game OWNS.

 

[Slo]

· Gives context for discussion among friends, instead of everyone else talking about Game X and you cupping your ears whining "omg don't tell me that Aeris dies", etc.

This is a trap. You can't possibly have time to play every game that your friends (or people on message boards) are playing. This kind of logic is the reason I wound up with dozens of unopened PS1 games at the end of last gen. I continually bought the latest releases for every system I own because I didn't want to get left behind, even though I was still playing through my older games. I never ended up opening lots of them and those games are all worthless now.

· Keep up with competition. Currently, there are two ways to ensure you can beat your friends at SF Collection or the like; buy the game now and practice, or murder your friends.

This is a good arguement for competitive games like Tribes or CS. However, if you just bought 15 other games, how much practice are you really going to be getting?

· Fulfillment of personal desire.

Hard to argue with this, but the intent of this thread seems to be to encourage rational purchasing decisions rather then impulse buys.

· Buying the game now might be cheaper than waiting for eBay premiums down the road.

Bad logic. For ever Panzer Dragoon Saga released, there are 2000 games drop $30 in price after 2 months. If you bought all of your games used, you'd have enough extra cash to buy every single copy of PDS that's being sold on eBay right now.

· Full developer support. This gives you the added bonus of having a base in pointing your finger and bitching at people when they ask why a sequel to such-and-such hasn't been made.

Good point.

 

[Ristamar]

Generally, I only buy one iteration of a sports franchise per generation at the most, unless I happen to find some really good deals. Keeping that in mind, I still didn't pay full price for any of the traditional sports titles I own now:

NCAA 2003, Tiger Woods 2003: $20 each
KnockOut Kings 2003, NHL 2004 (which I 'traded in' brand new without even opening): $15
NBA Live 2004: $12
Madden 2005: $25

I should note that every single game I listed except NCAA and Madden was purchased directly off of EA's store during their coupon/discount snafus. It seems they fuck up at least once a year, allowing ridiculous deals on brand new games.

 

[shantyman]

· Gives context for discussion among friends, instead of everyone else talking about Game X and you cupping your ears whining "omg don't tell me that Aeris dies", etc.
uel to such-and-such hasn't been made.

Aeris dies!?!?! Damn you for not using a spoiler tag!

 

[Link316]

On the contrary, why pay full price when you can get pretty much the same game from the previous year for a few bucks?

because they're not pretty much the same game to the people who follow them, I don't buy sport games but I understand the need and desire to get the latest version each year cause I went through that phase with SF2 and AKI's N64 wrestling games

 

[Xellos]

I've always wished that some sports developer would, when they first get the dev kits for a new console, take 2+ years of solid development time on their sports games. That way they could release a highly polished and playable product, and then just release patches (for the inevitable bugs) and roster updates for the next few years. The current system is like paying $40-50 each year only to find out that something is still wrong with the simulation, or the presentation is still lacking, or something else. I wish some developer would just take their time and get it right the first time.