Being a huge Tomb Raider Fan, I couldn't help but get the newest PS4 version of the latest Tomb Raider game, entitled Definitive Edition. This game received a very small CE that wasn't released over here but for less than 50 euros for a PS4 port, I couldn't really complain and decided to buy the digipak version of the game.
However, I will probably stop collecting new gen videogames so seriously now that the newer generation came out. It's a little hard to explain how I feel using English grammar, but since this blog is written in english since the beginning it would make no sense to change that now.
I have been assembling games since I was 12 or 13, during the Sega Saturn and Playstation 1 age. I started collecting more seriously a few years later but now I am getting a little tired. I still love collecting but companies are trying to milk the cow to death and I am having personal issues with that. First, the DLCs came. When I first heard about it I was a little reluctant. It was supposed to be something good to extend the lifetime of a particular game. But then they started with all that crap such as extra costumes and completely useless additions that do not affect the gaming experience in any way. Suddenly, many DLCs started to come out on the game's release date. Some were exclusive to certain editions whereas others were available if you preordered the game from a particular store. That's like buying a puzzle where some pieces are missing: you can still assemble it, but you'll end up with a few empty spots in the end. DLCs are not something that you can really collect. The most dramatic case I know of is Asura's Wrath. The game was actually offered to me by a very nice friend but I wouldn't buy that game unless it was brand new and the price was bellow 5 euros. Why would you even buy a game where you are forced to pay extra if you want to see the real ending? Those DLC could pretty much come inside each game disc on release date. But no, many think it's a better idea to actually sell another copy of the same game with all the extra stuff a few months later. How many different Skyrim editions are there already? Even being a DLC enthusiast, I never paid for a single DLC.
On top of that, too many important games are only coming out in digital format. That's actually good. Well, in theory at least. Producing so many physical copies is a waste of resources and digital copies are supposedly cheaper (not in every case..). But companies are not concerned with that. They only do that because they can cut production costs in games they don't expect to sell so well and hopefully increase their profit. Nothing new here... And suddenly they came up with a "wonderful" idea: Free to Play. Some games are actually very good and do a decent job where you don't really need to buy anything unless you want to progress faster in the game, such as Warframe. Others however are cancer in my opinion, such as that Free to Play Tekken. I am a huge Tekken fan but I downloaded the game and I couldn't stand more than half an hour. But the main issue I have with Free to Play games is, again, you can't collect them, you can't actually own a physical copy of that game, you have to buy too many DLCs in order to progress.
Another problem I see with collecting games is the enormous amount of editions that come out for the same game in different countries and sometimes for unbearable prices. It all started with Modern Warfare, the game that receive the 189 euros edition with night vision googles. Right now we have Titanfall for the XBone which has an edition priced at almost 300 euros and it doesn't even include the game inside the package. I started collecting CEs and LEs when they were 10 to 30 euros more expensive than the regular game and when they were really special. Nowadays each important game gets at least one edition and half of them end up in the bargain bin.
Then we have the steelbook fever. Steelbooks do look beautiful but the materials used are bad: cheap metal that rusts. They are not made of stainless steel or aluminium, they're just well handled cheap metal. If you're unlucky enough to live in a country with average to high humidity during the cold season like me, they tend to rust much faster and that's almost inevitable. Some people seem to live in a dream world and believe steelbooks don't rust, or simply rust when they are scratched and painting is chipped due to bad handling. That's completely wrong. I gave up collecting steels unless they come factory sealed or kept in vacuum, but most editions nowadays include one steelbook and people are not happy if they don't...
Finally, we also have the terrible attitude from companies like Microsoft. The Xbox 360 did something quite amazing and became a popular console all over the world, competing against the older videogame giants such as Nintendo or Sony. Me, being a Sony fan, bought one of these. And now I even own three. My 360 collection is just about as big as my PS3 collection. But now they just trashed the small empire they've built over the years around the world and decided to produce a console 100% oriented towards the US market, ignoring most of the other smaller countries. They were even able to upset the US costumers with all those rules about used games etc etc and decided to step back. Now I live in a place like many others in Europe and around the world that didn't even know when and what would be released here related to XBone by the time I originally wrote this post a few weeks ago.
All these things together become a nuisance for a collector like me. I am sticking with PS4 for this generation and I will definitely slow down my collection habits this time. With so many great games I am still missing in my retro collection, it's now time to spend more time and money to get those games instead of the overpriced CEs coming out from now on.
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