Topic: So many games Q4 of this year. HOW are you budgeting? Picking and choosing

With so many great games coming out both indie and triple AAA, it can bring a lot of anxious feelings of buying, missing out, and controlling your time for both work and real life priorities. As much as I want to buy every single game coming out, sometimes you have to stop being an admirer and pick/choose.

I had over 37 games on my wishlist and now I'm down to 3 which is a big accomplishment for me. I over-consumed and could not stop buying games where I had no time to play them.

Budget? What budget?

...actually, since I've been collecting for Switch for so many years and have a backlog so deep that it has made me dial back my spending quite a bit recently.

I mean, not buying a game at release doesn't mean you're missing out. It just means you can pick it up down the line.

An important skill is to learn to distinguish between games that you're truly excited for and games that others are hyping you up for. Pick the former up ASAP, budget allowing, and then, if the other stuff is actually excellent, you can grab it down the road.

The only game I have on preorder for now is Pokemon Violet. Besides that and Pac-Man World I'm not really thinking about buying other new games during the second half of the year, so far.

Not too stressed about it this year honestly. Only day one/preorder for the rest of the year for me is GOW Ragnarok. Will pickup NBA 2k23 and the new Mario + Rabbids during a holiday sale, everything else AAA/Indie I'm more than happy to wait for it to come to PS Plus or Gamepass.

I only buy a new game when I'm done with the previous one.
Can't play everything, especially if you're like me and tend to prefer long RPGs.
So far it's XC3 for me and probably Pokémon Violet at the end of the year.
If I have time inbetween I might pick up Live A Live.

Nintendo screwed up special edition preorders which made room for more purchases. For example XC3's special edition is My Nintendo Store exclusive so was a guaranteed disaster from the start, Bayonetta 3 special edition preorders went out of stock in like a few minutes, 2nd wave of Three Hopes special edition became available after the game launched when I had already settled for standard edition, etc.

Aside from Live A Live and Bayo 3, I am gonna wait until Black Friday for most of my buys (gotta buy a tv too). But I will likely top off my eshop credit to take advantage of digital sales.

Barring Advance Wars or No Man's Sky (not and, or), I plan on buying no new release after Splatoon 3 and before BOTW2. And probably not even a lot of old releases either. Too much backlog.

That would be true regardless but I've not gotten to the previous Mario + Rabbids game yet, I bought Nier on PS4, I'm not playing Persona 5 before at least one of the older ones, lolno @ mainline Pokemon.

It's a stacked year with an even more stacked Q4 indeed.
But all my attention is towards Xenoblade 3, interests for other games is just mild at best.

I'm sorta realising that I don't have to buy every game at launch just because it's there.

The only game I'm desperate to get at launch is Persona 5 Royal, because it's one of my favourite games of all time and I've been asking for a Switch version for years.

Also Pokemon because I'm always up for a new Pokemon game.

But otherwise I might have to see what I'm up for at the time. No point in buying a game Day 1 just to never get around to playing it (oh hi Age of Calamity), nor buying a game close to launch only to be disappointed by it and wishing my money and attention went elsewhere (Mario Strikers...)

Splatoon 3 day 1 for me.
I'm debating between Nier Automata and Bayonetta 3.
I'm waiting for reviews of: Midnight Marvel Suns, Sonic Frontiers, Hogwarts Legacy.

Finding the money is probably the least of my concerns, as I'm just going to buy the games that I'll actually have time to play, and I'm fully expecting Xenoblade 3 alone to keep me busy for several months.

The rest can probably wait until they go on sale at a discount several years from now.

Might for sure purchases for the rest of the year are XC3, Splatoon3, Rabbids 2, and Bayo3. Everything else will have to wait for a sale or when there's downtime.

I say that now but I know how I am when the time comes and something drops 😉

Bayonetta and Pokemon. Rabbids probably when it goes on sale inevitably or when I'm short on other content. Everything else I'm passing on

I don't have many games on my Switch backlog, just Luigi's Mansion which I couldn't get into for some reason. But my Steam backlog is vast. I tend to pay full retail for Switch so I'm a lot more picky in what I get for it. I have zero interest in having a large backlog on Switch

While I'm looking forward to quite a few of the titles for the rest of the year I doubt I'll actually pick any of them up day one as they'll likely just get lost in the backlog. I've also still got quite a few 3DS games I want to pick up before the store closes too, so I'll be trying to keep my Switch spending to a minimum for the rest of the year - I'll probably fail miserably though and end up buying everything day 1 and picking up loads of stuff in sales too 😂

I don't care about Pokemon, Xenoblade, Splatoon, Advance Wars, Persona, or Bayonetta, so for me there isn't anything to look forward to besides Sparks of Hope. I actually have a large chunk of money set aside to buy Switch games, but I'm just waiting for games to be announced that I actually care to buy.

There have been some good digital games lately like Cuphead DLC, ElecHead, and Portal Collection, but all the big retail releases are not to my taste at all. I really hope Nintendo has at least one unannounced game releasing this year that I want.

My most hype game is probably Xenoblade, after that I definitely want to get to pokemon, rabbids, and splatoon. There are a few others I'm interested in but might just have to sit out on for a while.

Ehh, feels like quantity over quality for this year. There's a lot of games coming, but almost none of them interest me. I don't care about Fire Emblem, Bayonetta, Xenoblade, Mario + Rabbids. Splatoon 3 just looks like a rehash of 2. Pokemon SV looks promising, but we still know little about it. MK8D DLC is just recycling old tracks, which is pretty much the last thing the game needed. BotW2 getting delayed to 2023 hurt badly. But more than that the big draw IPs have been absent. Mario Odyssey was 5 years ago, what has the 3D Mario team been working on all of that time? Prime 4 was restarted 3 years ago, isn't it time to reintroduce it? DK has been rumored, where is that?

I gave up trying to buy all the games years ago, as I just don't have time to play them properly. My "to be played" pile is constantly growing nonetheless.

In what's coming out this year, I know I want Harvestella, Splatoon 3, Bayonetta, Mario+Rabbits, Nier Automata, XC3 and Marvel Midnight Suns (on PC). Potion Permit and Gollum look quite good too.

But out of all of those I'm probably only buying Harvestella, Bayo, Splatoon and Marvel at launch. Harvestella because it's a brand new IP from a top studio in a genre that I love, Bayo because Bayo, Splatoon because the time to start playing a game like that is at launch, and Marvel because Firaxis make some of my all-time favorite games.

But sometime before those, I have to buy the other things I still haven't caught up with, such as AI2, Danganronpa, Slime Rancher, Spiritfarer and 13 Sentinels. And maybe find time to play some other things I bought and have hardly touched.