A year ago (roughly) I made a list. More on that in a minute. Following a surprise swag bag of previously unpaid wage arriving in December 2017, I picked up a long-time target purchase: a 4k tv. My launch PS4 made a Cinderella-esque HDR transformation and I enjoyed the final third of Horizon Zero Dawn in eye-blistering graphical glee. Anyway, this made me reflect on what I had bought that year and compared that to my actual mental ‘wishlist’. The conclusion I made was that I was more prone to dipping into an impulse buy as opposed to the more desirable purchases. I’m not talking about cars and motor boats; I mean games, geek-toys and other media. This was personified by Horizon – a game I had courted since its launch – that had to wait until Black Friday and a significant price drop. Thus, the list was made.
As well as video games and films/boxsets etc I also collect Transformers so these made up the majority of the list. The highlights were a PS4 Pro to fully appreciate my new 4K setup, most of the biggest games of the year I knew were coming (God of War, Spiderman, Pokemon Lets Go, Smash, Starlink) as well as a few on the backlog (Injustice 2, Skyrim Switch, Mario+Rabbids).
2018 came and has nearly gone and astonishingly, I’ve only got one item left on the list. In the first half of the year, I mopped up most of the games – waiting for offers to sweeten the deal: £21 for Injustice 2 legendary edition, £31 for Skyrim on the eshop plus using Zeek vouchers for an extra 7% discount on credit, £26 for Rabbids on eBay…and by the summer, most games on the list that had been released were signed, sealed and delivered and mine! This had two added bonuses: my focus then switched to the larger purchases and I had a little extra left over for the impulse buys (£4.99 Shovel Knight amiibo was the highlight).
Just after the launch of Spider-Man in September, an eBay 15% discount code plus a very attractive PS4 Pro bundle finally persuaded me to pull the trigger. Raising £170 on eBay for my launch PS4 gave me a net spend of £105 on my Pro. Not. Bad. At. All.
I guess the moral of the story is budgeting and being objective about your purchases pays off. We all have digital service backlogs (especially on Steam…) and even games that have remained untouched. I feel like I’ve achieved something and when the Christmas dust has settled, I’ll start to think about a new list. This time though, everything on it – as Sheldon from Big Bang Theory once said – ‘hasn’t been invented yet.’
pennilessdads 