Ugh first millennials aren't buying homes fast enough now it's this darn gen Z and not buying video games and 12 different streaming platforms. Such spoiled generations

Survivorship of older games is a really good indicator that they’ll continue to be available in the future. Like you said, too many modern games are online only and turn to expensive nothingness when the servers are shut down.

with no new ideas and safe bets only.

I'm just done with Capitalism in general. I got 1000 games, 200 of which are GOG offline installers. Those are burned onto M-Disc storage for the apocalypse. Cancelled all TV streaming, no buying games or books even. Nothing but food and bills now as I wait for it all to collapse.

Also, with the speed that games have been coming out the last 20 years, there’s always something on sale to play

Just (re) started Dead Space after not playing it for 10-15 years. Still good, still enjoy, why buy when I can just replay games I've forgotten the story to?

Same for Control a few months ago... And I'm sure others.

Especially when most games that've come out this year run like shit, and a new graphics card is nearly a rent payment

M-Disc

woah woah woah, Mr. Namedrop. What is this, now? 100GB RW Blu-rays? $57 for a pack of 6?

$57 for 600GB

$100 for a 4TB WD Red

the hard drive won't last as long

That implies it's powered. Would it last as long as cold storage? (with running disk checks every six months)

...this is so offtopic, but I must know.

M-Discs are just like Blu-ray storage. However, they are not re-writable, instead being physically engraved with a laser. They are marketed as lasting 1000 years. Get yourself a nice Bluray-writer and you're all set.

As a rule, I never buy games on release. From everything I hear, you pay twice the price to get an unfinished game in most cases.

I put them on my wishlist, keep an eye on the reviews and depending on those I decide how much of a discount it will require for me to actually buy the game. Usually I end up getting them at least a year later and/or at least at 50% off.

Maybe their parents have less money. Guess who's fault is it ?
Wall Street Journal that wrote original article have it in their name.

Make a timeline comparing the rising cost of games, rising unemployment, addition of tariffs on exports from Japan and this. Notice a pattern?

Tariffs would likely have very tiny influence on this statistic since most video game spending nowadays is digital, and digital products are protected from tariffs since tariffs are only attached to physical goods.

For a WD Red? Get that shingled magnetic shit out of my NAS.

That and broad, massive economic collapse in basically every other sector, at least in the US.

Can't play vidya gaem if hev no food starve.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/02/adp-jobs-report-june-2025.html

Oops.

Labor market (# of actual jobs) is now actually net contracting, shrinking.

Expected: +100k jobs

Reality: -33k jobs

Firings / Layoffs > Hiring.

Also the population grows, so uh, it actually has to be something like +200k to +250k to remain steady in terms of working age people vs jobs.

Sure, there are lots of 'job openings', but they're all fake ghost job bullshit that never actually hire anyone.

And they don't pay enough to bother doing them, and they have insane requirements that make no sense.

Great Depression 2.0 Gaming!

(The housing market is also collapsing if any readers haven't been paying attention.

My semi-educated guess is about a 55% drop by 24 months from now, compared to roughly '23-'24 highs.

Hope your boomer parents didn't buy in the last 5 years rofl!)

Games are getting more expensive. Console prices are going nuts; the Playstation 2 launched at $299 USD.

Wages have been stagnant longer than I've been alive. More and more people are struggling to make ends meet let alone buy luxuries like video games, particularly the young because of our kleptogeriocracy.

Younger folks often use video games as a hangout spot, because young folks hanging out together in public is a felony now. So they play the same few games for tens of thousands of hours. Minecraft, Roblox, Fortnite, I think the crowd that spend their adolescences in Garrysmod are in the attrition phase. You've already got a copy of these games, why buy another?

A lot of studios are being closed because business major's gonna business. Fuck brand recognition or loyalty, fuck development talent, fuck community building, fuck long-term strategy, we can realize a gain right now by sowing half the planet with salt, so that's what we're going to do. So what is there for people to buy?

That noise you heard last week was Xbox's death rattle. One out of the three mainstream home console platforms is an outright stupid idea to buy now.

Hard drives are affected by bit rot even when not in use. A disk check every six months would help, but is not a guarantee against data corruption or loss. M-DISCs are physically etched, and should last around a lifetime to a thousand years, depending on who you believe. The catch would be being able to read it in the distant future (in other words, if you're using M-DISC as a backup solution, you should also have a backup disc drive).

Saw this stupid fucking headline on some magazine a coworker left behind today.

the Playstation 2 launched at $299 USD.

Not disagreeing with you, but with inflation that's about $558 as of this comment.

I'm a bit younger, though not a lot.

I all but stopped buying games because Epic and Amazon give so many away for free.

I've got like 500 free games that I haven't even installed once.

The only time I'd actually pay for a game is if it's a special one I want, and they've gotten few and far between.