Cheapest gaming

stphnstevey

Currently have a PS4 and buying games on sale, roughly spending about £4/month on average on games during the year and have about 20 games backlog
Now that I have a PS4, PS NOW seems to be a good deal at £50/yr or £4/month and access to around 800 games PS4, PS3 and PS2
I prefer PS NOW to PS+ as it gives access to wide selection of games immediately and not have to build up a collection via 2 games each month
I believe the Xbox version is still in beta
Google Stadia at £9/month seems double the price of PS NOW and again, only gives free games monthly
Nvidia has a subscription based gaming system, but it seems game company licencing is an issue and some are pulling out
I would consider PC gaming, but the initial cost of £800+ puts me off
Happy for any guidance?

jonnygee2

A lot depends on what you want to play.

PS Now doesn't seem great to me. A lot of the games are PS3 games, you can buy a PS3 and second hand games pretty cheap if that's what you want to play. There isn't a lot of choice for decent PS4 games on it. It might provide a good addition to your library but I don't think it's likely to be all you want / need.

Stadia works out at pretty expensive to buy a lot of the games. You don't get sales like you do with PC, so you actually have to pay the ridiculous rack rates of £50 or so for a triple A game or whatever it is.

Long term I think PC gaming can be cheaper if you play a lot of different games, because you can build a library of games without worrying about 'backwards compatibility', and you have far more choice of independent games, older games, and different store sales. I think that's why a lot of serial long term gamers prefer PC, but as you say, there is a base platform cost. If you spend £800 (a decent but budget gaming PC) every 5 years, that's £160 /yr just for the system. Great if you are saving more than this, but if you are only buying a few games a year or so it's too much.

Overall, I'd say lower volume gamers, who want a good selection of AAA games available, should always go for a console and buy the disks they want. Which console depends on your games preference really.  And people who want to play as many games as possible, including older or independent games, in the long term should go PC. 

Really budget gamers should probably build a very basic PC for £400 or so and then just stick to old games that will run on it. 
 

gzoom

Stadia currently has a 'free' trial going, took me 1 minute to sign up and last few days been enjoying Destiny 2 and Grid for £0 spent on hardware or software.

I was worried about lag but as you can see even on my 2013 laptop using my Xbox controller in mutliplayer there is no lag!!
https://youtu.be/O1gbOEtGSNs

I don't have much time for games these days, Destiny 2 (+ add ons) looks so massive I recon it'll keep me busy for a long while, and if Google bundles in a few good 'free' games with the £8.99/month in the coming months am sold.

This is my current list of 'free' games in Stadia at present, I doubt I'll get through them for a while .

DCFC79

Xbox have Xbox Live which gives you 4 games free a month or you can upgrade to Game Pass Ultimate and you get access to over 100 games but what I'm not a fan off is games you have started could get removed from the store at some point.

DCFC79

stphnstevey said:

Currently have a PS4 and buying games on sale, roughly spending about £4/month on average on games during the year and have about 20 games backlog
Now that I have a PS4, PS NOW seems to be a good deal at £50/yr or £4/month and access to around 800 games PS4, PS3 and PS2
I prefer PS NOW to PS+ as it gives access to wide selection of games immediately and not have to build up a collection via 2 games each month
I believe the Xbox version is still in beta
Google Stadia at £9/month seems double the price of PS NOW and again, only gives free games monthly
Nvidia has a subscription based gaming system, but it seems game company licencing is an issue and some are pulling out
I would consider PC gaming, but the initial cost of £800+ puts me off
Happy for any guidance?

Xbox Version of what sorry ?

Do you mean Game Pass Ultimate

stphnstevey

DCFC79 said:

stphnstevey said:

Currently have a PS4 and buying games on sale, roughly spending about £4/month on average on games during the year and have about 20 games backlog
Now that I have a PS4, PS NOW seems to be a good deal at £50/yr or £4/month and access to around 800 games PS4, PS3 and PS2
I prefer PS NOW to PS+ as it gives access to wide selection of games immediately and not have to build up a collection via 2 games each month
I believe the Xbox version is still in beta
Google Stadia at £9/month seems double the price of PS NOW and again, only gives free games monthly
Nvidia has a subscription based gaming system, but it seems game company licencing is an issue and some are pulling out
I would consider PC gaming, but the initial cost of £800+ puts me off
Happy for any guidance?

Xbox Version of what sorry ?

Do you mean Game Pass Ultimate

This https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/xbox-game-streaming

MinuteNoodles

If you want the cheapest gaming get an Xbox.

Xbox have the Gamepass which is their equivalent to PS Now however it has all their first party titles, including their AAA ones in it at launch (Gears 5 was actually on Gamepass a week before launch), PS Now is woeful in comparison. They have Gamepass Ultimate for £10.99 a month which rolls into one XBox Live and Gamepass so like having PS Plus and PS Now in a single subscription.

So why is Xbox cheaper? One thing that Microsoft also do is the Rewards program where you can earn points for spending in the online store when you buy games/films or rent films, doing things like searches in Bing, mobile searches, clicking on a few things on the Rewards page and for just playing games on your console. You can convert those points to either vouchers but more importantly you can convert them to Gamepass or Gamepass Ultimate subscriptions. It's quite feasible to earn enough points that you never have to pay for GPU ever again so you can have Xbox Live, Gamepass and it's hundreds of games including their AAA first party titles on launch day plus fairly recent genre leading games from other developers such as Dirt Rally 2.0 for £0.

And it gets better. Most of their AAA titles and some of the others are "Play Anywhere" titles meaning you can also play them FOR FREE on a PC too. Gears 5, Forza, Halo etc all free on your PC too whilst you have an active Gamepass/GPU subscription.

(I've just read that and realised just how much it sounds like an advertisement...sorry.)

If you don't have an Xbox One X and the money to buy one Microsoft do a programme, Xbox All Access which will be launching in the UK on 5th November where for a monthly fee you can buy an Xbox One S or X complete with Gamepass Ultimate subscription and upgrade to the Series X when it's released. From their site:

"Xbox All Access lets people pay for Xbox consoles over 24 months, with no upfront cost. For a limited time, anyone purchasing an Xbox One X console in this way before December 31, 2019, will have the option to upgrade to Project Scarlett when it officially launches in Holiday 2020. "  ....Xbox One X and GPU will be a combined £24.99 a month - GPU is £10.99/m so over the 24 months you're essentially getting a One X for £240 at 0% interest finance on the console.

And best part about it is you can pay for that or some of it using the points you've earned from the Microsoft Rewards scheme.

fredbaugh123

I think mobile games are the cheapest of all ,.. haha

Benzine

I use a postal game rentals service (yes they still exist!) and I've been very impressed. They have different packages from about £4 a month. I pay about £12 a month to rent 1 game at a time with unlimited games in a month. It's saved me a lot of money.

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to name them due to advertising rules on here. A quick Google search will find them though. 

henry11vr

I would rather choose PC gaming, and would play in something online, till that time when I would qualified enough to participate in any kind of cyber games / esports tournaments. Talking about esports, what do you think about mental support of the players? Here is a site ( weblink: https://www.getinproleague.com/blog/post/mental-health-of-esports-players-why-it-is-important-to-have-a-psychologist-in-team-nwidwrwp9 ), and article, where author explained some pretty interesting facts about mental-related issues in cybergames' industry.

FaceHead

fredbaugh123 said:

I think mobile games are the cheapest of all ,.. haha

I was going to suggest 'I spy'. Then the OP needs to consider whether cheapest gaming is really what they want.