So, as it turns out, your average gamer spends $325 a year on gaming. While it's unclear whether this includes hardware, that's still not super high. If it does include hardware, I probably spend around $400 a year. If it doesn't, I spend around $200. It can put me on either side of the curve.
Either way, let's put it this way. $325 a year is 4 games at $80 each. it's 4.5 games at $70 each. It's 5 games at $60 each. We can see how price increases are negatively impacting those on the price sensitive side of things. If you do discounts, with $20-30 games being average, that's 11 $30 games roughly, or 16 $20 games. As I said, I buy about 9 games a year at an average of $22. Prices of games very widely. Some games I spend up to around $52.50 on with $70 games being 25% off, whereas others I buy for like $2.50 on steam. It averages out to 9 games at $22. And this is a bit below average. I guess my family's household income is a bit below average, so it's proportional to that. I do live in a pretty craphole city all things considered with limited economic opportunities.
But yeah. And then nintendo comes out here charging $450 for a switch 2 and wanting $70-80 for games. It's kind of insane. Anyway, that's why I laugh that stuff out of the room. Same with the hardware prices that people charge. I'm in your typical $300ish "60" card camp. if I had to buy a GPU right now, i'd likely buy a $270-280 9060 XT 8 GB. While I'd love the 16 GB model, it's a full $100 jump for that. Either way Im glad I got a 6650 XT like 3 years ago and can just ride the market out a few more years. I dread what hardware prices will be when I do upgrade as the nvidia de facto monopoly has led to lots of price inflation in the GPU sector.
But yeah. When anyone makes you think that you're like poor or something, nah, you're just average, or within the average range. I'm a little below average if $325 is just on games, but eh, I'm still way ahead of your average European at $125 (or $170 for westerners on average). Again, you gotta keep in mind what people can afford. These people charging insane money for stuff...only like the top 20% of people can afford that stuff. And those guys have an insane amount of disposible income that it's greatly distorting the market.
Also, a lot of that money is spent on microtransactions, which being budget conscious, I always thought as dumb. Okay, would you rather spend $10 to paint your gun blue....or $10 on some discounted game on steam? Just how I think about things. Heck, if around half of all revenue comes from microtransactions, that's still spending $160ish a year on actual games, and that puts me back above average because I actually have frugal spending habits dont waste my money on nonsense.
Again, so am I really that far away from the average?
Not saying this to cope btw, more just expressing frustration with a market that's inflationary and realizing that yeah, my habits arent THAT far away from the typical gamer's. We only got so much money to spend and we tend to sort value accordingly. I tend to be particularly frugal, and I feel every price increase. And it leads to me to consume less. I know there are a lot of upper class yuppies trying to act like anyone who doesnt have their extravagant spending habits is somehow impoverished and undeserving, but nah, you're probably closer to the average than you think.
No comments:
Post a Comment