In two days we’ll all be surrounded by family members who are passed out in turkey comas (Or passed out drunk, depending on your family). While us gamers are waiting for Uncle Larry to wake up and move his truck out of the driveway, we’ll have to find some way to amuse ourselves. Fortunately there are a few digital distributors who are having sales before Back Friday, and we can stock up on games to keep us entertained for the next few days.
Tired of all the holiday sales offering the same discounts on the same merchandise? How about just getting some free games instead? Direct2Drive seems to be avoiding the typical holiday sale mentality, and is instead just giving their products away. For the rest of 2010, any time you make a purchase with a credit card on D2D, you have a one in five chance of getting your entire order free. It’s a clever marketing scheme, which appeals to the grabby looter in all of us. For the company, it’s pretty much the same as a 20% price cut on everything, but consumers will see it as “free Free FREE!!!”
As hardcore gamers know, each winter Tycho and Gabe from Penny Arcade hold a charity drive to buy toys and games for children’s hospitals in the hope that this act of kindness will absolve the two of their lifetime of sins. Often other gaming organizations will do special events to promote, or raise money for Child’s Play, including last week’s Mega Man Marathon, and the Fallout New Vegas Marathon which ended a day ago. At the moment another band of virtual masochists are in the middle of their annual Desert Bus For Hope telethon.
We’ve been run ragged for the last week trying to keep up with all of the holiday sales that have been popping up all over the internet. Now we enter the week before Black Friday, which is also the week before “Cyber Monday”. For those of you who aren’t aware, “Cyber Monday” is the myth that retailers made up to create hype about online sales the Monday after Thanksgiving. The whole Black Friday and Cyber Monday thing have officially become moot with the relentless “Pre Black Friday” sales that we had for the last week, however we here at Player Affinity just love cheap games, so we’ll cover as many of the damned sales as we can over the next week, or rather six weeks since there will be relentless retail publicity stunts right up through New Year’s Day.
Those of you who have followed our coverage of Games For Windows and their week-long sale may have noticed a pattern. On Monday they offered a game at 40% off. Tuesday it was 50%, and each day this week they offered a ten percent increase in discount, until yesterday’s90% off sale on Bioshock. Well, today they’ve taken the pattern to its logical conclusion, with a 99.% off sale on Age of Empires III: Complete Collection. That is not a typo. In fact, since the game normally costs $39.99 and today it’s being sold for ten cents, the discount is a bit closer to 99.75% off.
Although many MMO-style games try to ape World of Warcraft’s success and formula, there are relatively few quality FPS titles that venture into the MMO arena. Planetside was one moderately successful title in this vein, but often was regarded as too sterile and uncoordinated. Hellgate: London tried it as well to little triumph. With these remnants of titles still kicking around, is there any chance of a MMOFPS that gets it right? Hopefully, Webzen Inc.’s Huxley can fill those shoes. Huxley has been in development for several years and recently expanded to open beta; it will attempt to bridge the gap between modern shooters and the expansive world of MMORPGs like World of Warcraft.
After a full week of massive sales, we enter the weekend before Thanksgiving. Normally, this wouldn’t be a big deal, but all of the retailers have been trying to one-up each other to get the best sale online before everybody else. Therefore this weekend is looking to be almost as packed with sales as Black Friday will be. Let’s have a look at these terrific deals.
It’s a week to go before the mountain of online sales for Black Friday but, if you have a wad of cash burning a hole through your pockets, you’ll find plenty of ways to spend it this weekend with all of these deals from digital distributors. Direct2Drive.com has been holding a Rockstar Sale all week, and today’s Deal of The Day is BOTH Max Payne games for $3.75 altogether. That’s 75% off the usual price, and a fine way to spend $3.75.
The internet is swamped with sales on PC games this week, and several digital distributors are holding daily deals all week long with a different game on sale every day. Amazon, D2D and the new version of Games For Windows Live are all pestering us with their cheap games, so let’s see how we can spend some scratch before the inevitable Black Friday sales we’ll see next week.
Just two weeks after all the digital distributors had Halloween sales, and lees than two weeks before the inevitable Black Friday sales, we find ourselves with a glut of pre-holiday sales, and Daily Deals. Direct2Drive, and Games For Windows are holding daily deals, on top of all the usual sales, so let’s have a look at what’s up for grabs today, Tuesday the 16th.
