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Growing up gaming and poor

Bo_Hazem

Banned
Damn those are crazy prices, here it was jacked up also, but not that much. Does the situation improved? For example, now the prices for both consoles (that matter I am out of Nintendo trolling warning) USD price + 21% VAT, games are more expensive around 80 USD for 60 USD game and well for PS5, it's Around 95-105 USD standard edition which is major bullshit, main reason why am I waiting for buying it down the line, it's not that I cannot afford it, it's just does not feel as a price for game, feels like for some physical thing. At least in my brain.

So are you doing better with prices down there, right now?

Yes Sony has been great around here monitoring the market since PS4. Actually physical copies can be pretty cheaper than US prices here, like finding The Division day -14 (yes, two weeks before release) for only 18 OMR ($46.8). Those are all before VAT. Now since April 16th we have 5% VAT for the first time. We were virgins.:lollipop_crying:

get a gf :D (lol , at my own jokes)

Gave you a like because I think you're a Manchester United fan, or at least from Manchester?
 
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Yes Sony has been great around here monitoring the market since PS4. Actually physical copies can be pretty cheaper than US prices here, like finding The Division day -14 (yes, two weeks before release) for only 18 OMR ($46.8). Those are all before VAT. Now since April 16th we have 5% VAT for the first time. We were virgins.:lollipop_crying:



Gave you a like because I think you're a Manchester United fan, or
 

M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
Yes Sony has been great around here monitoring the market since PS4. Actually physical copies can be pretty cheaper than US prices here, like finding The Division day -14 (yes, two weeks before release) for only 18 OMR ($46.8). Those are all before VAT. Now since April 16th we have 5% VAT for the first time. We were virgins.:lollipop_crying:
Very nice 👍🏻 VAT sucks, but hey free health-care and all that stuff : )
 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
yes,.
are you on coke? lol.

All respect, mate. And no, I'm 100% clean. :messenger_winking_tongue:

Man Utd Thank You GIF by Manchester United
 

Raven117

Gold Member
Yeah, growing up I really made my decision based on how long a game would last me.
Turned me into a massive sports gaming fan because you could literally play FIFA for years. Once I got into piracy with the PS1 modchip the length of games was less important to me, now that I have more money for games than time to play them I appreciate it when games are a little shorter.

What you are saying still holds true for the vast majority of the gaming audience though.
At the top of the charts you will find FIFA/Madden/2K, CoD, AssCreed, GTA and other games that are packed with content and have a high replay value.
Every time I read "games are too long" or "open world fatigue" or "bloated" on forums I have to cringe a little because those complaints are made by people who buy lots of games per year.
I never thought about that with sports games but you are absolutely right.

Same. While “bloated” can be a decent enough criticism, it doesn’t take into account that bloated can be a good thing for some folks.
 

Dane

Member
I'm from Brazil, so my story is mostly similar to other kids: Started with the PS1 at the new year's eve in 2001, found out about the PS2 in 2002-2003 and asked my parents for it, but they kept denying it because it was very expensive (it was an equivalent to like 1000 dollars), its not that they couldn't afford it , but it was just your "too expensive to waste money", in the meantime I got a PC (because it was more useful), had also lots of fun of PS2 games that had a PC port, but sadly by that point the platform was in a crisis, so lots of cool stuff kept skipping it in favor of consoles. Finally got it in december 2006 with Burnout Revenge, a franchise that I always wanted to play for what would have been like 350 dollars at this point, and had lots and lots of fun and overnights.

Three years later i've got an Xbox 360 at the same price thanks to a dolar devaluation and the country in a great shape, with my allowance savings and a big extra i've got after passing the school year. Today consoles are still expensive but aren't considered an very very hard stuff to buy because you can do in interest free installments up to 10-12 months, before that, most people like me were a generation behind for the whole duration.

Damn those are crazy prices, here it was jacked up also, but not that much. Does the situation improved? For example, now the prices for both consoles (that matter I am out of Nintendo trolling warning) USD price + 21% VAT, games are more expensive around 80 USD for 60 USD game and well for PS5, it's Around 95-105 USD standard edition which is major bullshit, main reason why am I waiting for buying it down the line, it's not that I cannot afford it, it's just does not feel as a price for game, feels like for some physical thing. At least in my brain.

So are you doing better with prices down there, right now?
Great thread, indeed, and we really need it. People need to be grateful when they're lucky enough to buy whatever game they want.

I was/am from a higher middle class so got most of the games/consoles I wanted, but not spoiled at all. Also we suffered from crazy gray market prices. Atari 2600 and PS1 both were sold at $2600 (1000 OMR) early on and only the rich would buy them. Don't remember Nintendo Family Game price on early stages (NES) but I think it wasn't that expensive. Sega MegaDrive when we bought it was around 350 OMR ($910). PS2 I bought it in the US then shamefully modified it when got back home to run pirated games for $2.6-1.3 each (same with PS1), 1-0.5 OMR. Couldn't buy Sega Saturn because it was so static at around 600 OMR ($1560) at its cheapest point. Nintendo N64 was pricey as well but don't remember how much.

PS3 was around 700 OMR for the higher model ($1820) but got it when it became 350 OMR ($910) late 2007. Got my PS4 with the official price for the first time for 181 OMR ($470) then PS5 now at 215 OMR ($559). So you can see that the gray market made you feel poor, and that hurts console sales as well as PS1 would've sold at least 200M.

But it was Atari 2600 during late 1980's, then Family Computer (NES) early 1990's then Megadrive around 1993, PS1 around 1997, PS2 in 2002, PS3 2007, PS4 2013, PS5 2020.

Also bought Sega Game Gear back in the 1990's.

The PS3 was released in the grey market here for R$8.000,00, the same time i've bought my PS2, it was the equivalent of like 3.7k dollars, not joking, the X360 came here at the same week officially for half of the PS3 price. Most people got the X360 because it was cheaper and could run pirate games since its early days, Microsoft was also the first to come here officially (before that it was all representations which were dead by early 2000s) and were the first to bring dubbed games with Viva Pinata and Halo 3, their prices for games and consoles were lower than anyone else too.
 
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M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
I'm from Brazil, so my story is mostly similar to other kids: Started with the PS1 at the new year's eve in 2001, found out about the PS2 in 2002-2003 and asked my parents for it, but they kept denying it because it was very expensive (it was an equivalent to like 1000 dollars), its not that they couldn't afford it , but it was just your "too expensive to waste money", in the meantime I got a PC (because it was more useful), had also lots of fun of PS2 games that had a PC port, but sadly by that point the platform was in a crisis, so lots of cool stuff kept skipping it in favor of consoles. Finally got it in december 2006 with Burnout Revenge, a franchise that I always wanted to play for what would have been like 350 dollars at this point, and had lots and lots of fun and overnights.

Three years later i've got an Xbox 360 at the same price thanks to a dolar devaluation and the country in a great shape, with my allowance savings and a big extra i've got after passing the school year. Today consoles are still expensive but aren't considered an very very hard stuff to buy because you can do in interest free installments up to 10-12 months, before that, most people like me were a generation behind for the whole duration.




The PS3 was released in the grey market here for R$8.000,00, the same time i've bought my PS2, it was the equivalent of like 3.7k dollars, not joking, the X360 came here at the same week officially for half of the PS3 price. Most people got the X360 because it was cheaper and could run pirate games since its early days, Microsoft was also the first to come here officially (before that it was all representations which were dead by early 2000s) and were the first to bring dubbed games with Viva Pinata and Halo 3, their prices for games and consoles were lower than anyone else too.
Brasil?

Edit: Sorry you wrote it. PS3 was 17k CZK which was back then around 900USD, X360 CORE was 450 and X360 with HDD was around 600. This situation improved a LOT here. Even with games, but Sony is bringing the prices of PS1/2 back now : (
 
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drganon

Member
Money was definitely tight for me and my family back during the ps2 era. I pretty much only got games during the holidays.
 

DeceptiveAlarm

Gold Member
I had similar circumstances. I did get a new from a grandfather I only saw at Christmas in like 91. I would of been around 8. I only had mario and duck hunt forever. Games were exspensive so I would get one maybe two a year. You just played them over and over.
 
Damn bro. The feels.
Yeah, every time I buy a new console I still feel the same. Really taught me how to cherish and take care of everything I have.

I still feel the chills down my spine every time I remember it, and my father and brother still have a laugh about it now and then.
 
The 90s recession hit our family, from then on had to work for the games/consoles together with my younger brother.
We picked berries to get a PS1 (+ SNES trade in)
Had a friendly small game shop that we would visit daily.
The owner would hide good/newer games under the counter for us, and kept trade in fees minimal as we were in there all the time.
Thanks to this shop we could go through almost whole PAL library of games for SNES & PS1.

Now I can afford all the gaming things I want.
I still buy my games physical prob due to the fond memories of trading games... but today I just give them to family and friends when im done with the game.

I just pictured two kids walking into a game store with a couple pails of berries each, handing them to the owner who pulls a game out from under the counters. When you leave he unzips his human suit and starts eating berries. Turns out he's actually a bear.
 
I always waited for when my dad bought random videogames all the time. The day he bought me a Sega Saturn was random AF.... Same with the N64, Dreamcast, PS2 and Xbox... I never asked my parents to buy me video games... I just waited for the opportunity to present itself!
 
I just pictured two kids walking into a game store with a couple pails of berries each, handing them to the owner who pulls a game out from under the counters. When you leave he unzips his human suit and starts eating berries. Turns out he's actually a bear.
:messenger_grinning_squinting:

Well there's places that you can go with your berries and sell them for cash.
 

TheContact

Member
i always appreciate parents who can't afford leisure items who do everything they can to get things to make their kids happy. my family is well off and my kids are so fucking spoiled i can't even deal with it anymore but that's my own fault
 

Shubh_C63

Member
Man I feel you. I came from a humble family, we were poor but surprisingly I never felt poor. When I grew up I did came to know we were amongst the poor ones back then.

I had a cheap russian knockoff SNES in India and I dragged it till we could own a computer (for signing college forms for my older sibling) back in 2004. I only knew handful of games by then (Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo, Age of Mythology).

Actual gaming starts after 2013 when I could own a laptop from my own money. I did not knew what ZELDA is till then.
Dendy_Junior_with_cart_and_joypads.jpg
 

fart town usa

Gold Member
We weren't poor by any means but 5 kids and a single income household so videogames weren't really something my parents got for us. They did buy a NES/SNES but the games were mostly our responsibility to buy. My older brother and I got paper routes and saved to get an N64, PSX, Saturn, etc. It was awesome. Funcoland was super helpful back then too, loads of cheap games. Kids would trade all the time too, I remember trading a tamogochi pet in middle school for a copy of Comix Zone.

Older brother got a job at the local video store too, helped with bringing home games and buying games for cheap when they were being sold off.

Now I own like 13 consoles, lol. I don't even consider myself a collector but I've just amassed a shit ton of stuff over my adult life. The XBOX and 360 mostly just sit there but the other consoles get played on a somewhat regular basis.
 

Convicsik

Member
I grew up in a working poor family. Always had food and clothes and a nice house, but there were no vacations or extras for the most part, except for Christmas. My parents always got my brother and I the console we wanted for Christmas. My parents NEVER bought us games though. You got the console and maybe a game for Christmas, then for the rest of the year you rented games. Never bothered me though because going to the video store to rent a game were Some of the best times of my childhood.
 
While not poor, my parents were against spending tons of money on entertainment. I live in a third-world country so owning multiple consoles was unthinkable back then. My brother had to sell the Game Boy to afford the Playstation, and sell it later to get the Dreamcast. Later we bought the GBA and sold it a year later to buy the Gamecube and eventually the PSP. We used to sell each GBA game we finished to be able to buy the next one. Many of the Gameboy games we played were simply borrowed from friends. Luckily pirated PS1 and DC games were cheap. But the real thing? Way too expensive by third-world standards. It's the reason we couldn't play many games on the GameCube. My brother managed to borrow the PS2 for ten days (long enough for me to discover Shadow of the Colossus). I couldn't play anything from the PS3 gen at all.

Fast forward to today and I can buy the consoles and games I want, I even have a backlog now. You could say I've come a long way.
 

Ten_Fold

Member
The only way for me to really get new games outside of my birthday was to trade in whatever I had to get something new or borrow a friends game.

I remember only having wind Waker and beating that game over and over, finding everything. I remember having to borrow majoras mask and the expansion pak from someone at my elementary. Yeah man growing up poor sucked. I told myself I won’t ever be poor like this and worked hard, so nobody in my family has to worry about food or bills.
 
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