The thing that I like most about the next generation of gaming, is how cheap the last generation of gaming becomes. There is a sweet spot when all of the games and systems that you wanted to play, become cheap enough to justify putting them on your shelf for a while. If you miss that sweet spot, you end up having to pay for something that has suddenly become hard to find and rare and the price tag usually reflects that.
So, while every one of my friends is worried about pre-ordering this and that for their new gaming systems, I can pick up what will soon be considered classics for a fraction of the cost of new, just before newer collectors go back to relive their favorite era of gaming and make the prices climb. Because that is what happens. The gamers of the eighties gave up their NES and Genesis systems in order to adopt the newest technology of the nineties. Eventually, nostalgia or something else gave them the desire to explore and relive the gaming glory of their youth. This caused the market to adjust their prices and everything got more expensive, and now because we had jobs, we could afford the inflated prices of the things that we had already gotten rid of once.
Now, you see the collectors buying the games for the GameCube and original Xbox and making them even harder to find. It drives up the prices. If you want a copy of Fire Emblem for the GameCube, you better be prepared to pay a pretty penny for it. If you want a game of the year copy of Morrowind on Xbox, you will have a harder time finding it than in the past. The same thing will happen for Wii, PS3 and the 360 eventually. You can already see that there are certain games that are getting harder to find, let alone a nice copy with a booklet and original art. But right now is the perfect time to check out the games that you were too busy to play when they first released. The next…I mean current gen, will be waiting for you when you are ready.
