Thanks to Google Docs and my sick fascination with spreadsheets I’ve kept tabs on my video game spending habits throughout 2008. Now that the year is over it’s time to dive into those stats and see just how things panned out for me. WARNING! EXTREME NERD ALERT!!!!

In 2008 I played a total 41 games. Of those 41, only 30 were 2008 releases. Out of the 41 games total 27 were new copies, while 14 were used and 16 I ended up trading/selling away.

The total price for the 41 games based on Amazon’s price at the time I got each game amounts to $1,702.00 but thanks to cheapassgamer.com, Goozex, Gift Cards, gifts & some good old fashioned wheeling & dealing I only ended up spending $227.50 for an overall savings of $1,474.50 (86.63%).

This means the average cost per game for me in 2008 was only $5.55. Subtract that from the average MSRP for the 41 games ($41.51) and I ended up saving an average of $35.96 per game.

I also racked up an extra $28 in savings over the year thanks to coupon redemptions, but this amount is most certainly higher since I didn’t do such a good job tracking these over the year.

I waited an average of 101 days after release to pick up my games, though I did buy 17 within a week of their release date. That 101 days figure is skewed way higher due to older games I picked up this year such as Daxter (665 days after release), Tomb Raider: Legend (634 days after release), and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories (517 days after release) to name a few.

The most expensive game I bought this year was Little Big Planet for the PS3 which I paid full retail price for with absolutely no savings at all. Not to mention I picked up a PS3 in order to play it.

The only other games I paid full price for were XBLA & PSN games. I need to do a better job in 2009 of picking up discounted point cards to avoid repeating that trend.

My System Breakdown is as follows:

* Xbox 360: 27 (66%)
* PSP: 10 (24%)
* DS: 2 (5%)
* PS3: 2 (5%)

(I also bought one game for my phone, but I never added it to my spreadsheet so oh well. PS – it was Galaga, it was $7 and it sucked)

2008 Retailer Breakdown: (where I got my games from)

* Goozex: 13 (32%)
* Best Buy: 12 (29%)
* XBLM: 6 (15%)
* GameStop: 5 (12%)
* PSN: 2 (5%)
* Circuit City: 1 (2%)
* GoGamer: 1 (2%)
* Amazon: 1 (2%)

I’ll be keeping tabs on things once again 2009, collecting additional data as well such as Goozex points redeemed/received, money made from selling games, gift card redemption totals & more. I’ll see you all in January 2010 with the results

Next up, my obligatory 2008 awards and year in review.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 9th, 2009 at 3:32 pm and is filed under Video Games, wishlist. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.