Do you buy second hand games/consoles?

sqwgglz wrote: »

There are mitigating factors to consider here, of course. Firstly, a pre-owned sale does not automatically equate to a lost sale. A consumer willing to pay, say, £10 for a second-hand game may never have been prepared to spend £40 on the new version.

That's one thing I never understand with these comparisons. They always seem to compare the cost of a game second-hand about three years after release with the cost of a new game on release day?

I swept through the 360 catalogue through 2010-2013, buying about 40 games, mostly exclusives. Including international delivery, the average price per game was £8.xx (yes, I spreadsheeted), because I used (abused?) sales, cashback, and voucher codes. Three games (Sacred 2, Assassin's Creed 2 and AC: Brotherhood) were second-hand (and Sacred 2 was a lot more than £8!). There were a few newly-released games in there, too - I bought RDR and Halo: Reach in their first month of release. But the average price was still under £9 per new game, delivered.

(Or to put it another way, about three times the average price of PC games )

Can't afford to buy new console games? Don't buy them on day one! Just today, for example, Nintendo Land is £7.50 from Asda. There are deals like this every week, if not every day, for new games. In fact, normal prices for second-hand games are far, far higher than discounted prices for new games. There are plenty of ridiculously-cheap new games for anyone who is prepared to wait for a sale.