Videogames are not as cheap as other hobbies – but they definitely can be! When you are stepping into the world of gaming, you may find it a little tricky to stay on a budget. Video Games may seem expensive but there are cheap ways to enjoy those games on your favorite platform.
Humble Choice
Price:
- Lite – $5 a month or $45 a year
- Basic – $15 a month or $135 a year
- Premium – $20 a month or $180 a year
For a PC gamer, there is nothing better than the Humble Choice. When you subscribe to Humble Choice, you will get games each month and all depends on your subscription.
If you are on the lite subscription you will get access to the humble trove which contains 90+ DRM-free games from which you can play. The basic plan will grant you the choice of 3 games among 10+ games they offer each month.
The premium will let you choose 9 of the games. The games you will choose you will receive CD Keys which you can activate on Steam.
In addition, you get discounts on the humble store. The lite and the basic get a 10% discount and the premium get 20% off.
if you are interested to know more about the humble bundle you can check out my post Is Humble Bundle Legit & Worth It? An Honest Review
PlayStation Plus
Price: $5 a month or $60 for a year
With PlayStation Plus you can get six games a month for $60 a year. It may sound pretty good but it has its cons. The quality of the games isn’t the top tier since the games only come when Sony has had their bargain.
The games that come aren’t yours to keep, because when you cancel your PlayStation Plus subscriptions the games are going to disappear. The good thing is when you re-subscribe you get access back to all of those games.
No Backward Compatibility On PS4
The bad thing is that most of the games you get are for PS Vita and PS3, not of PS4. Since there is no backward compatibility, you cannot play them. There are a few games that need you to have the PSVR bundle too, which is around $300-$450.
Therefore, if you do not have all of these devices, you will not be able to play all the games you get. This racks up to quite a bit – if you’ve got just a PS4 then Plus isn’t your option.
Soon, there is going to be a major decrease in all of the Plus games available. At a point, Sony will stop offering Vita and PS3 games, at which the Plus subscribers will get just two PS4 games each month.
The best thing that you get out of Plus is the savings at the PlayStation Store. Many games offer discounts for Plus subscribers at the PlayStation Store.
If you still didn’t decide what is better for you, a PC or a Console. You can check my post Console Vs PC Gaming – Which Is The Right One For You?
Nintendo Switch Online
Price: $3.99 a month or $19.99 for a year
Nintendo has joined the game with Switch Online. With Switch Online you get a library of Nintendo Entertainment System – NES games that keeps on growing. These games are not the latest or even recent at all.
Where you get a mix of last-gen and current games from Sony and Microsoft, the Switch Online library only gives you games that are many years old.
If you are someone that loves Nintendo and wants to relive childhood memories, then this is the option for you. Enjoy games that you may have loved as a kid at a much lower price. You can even have an eight-member family plan at $34.99 a year.
Xbox Live Gold
Price: $9.99 a month or $59.99 a year
There is a similar service that you get from Microsoft, Games with Gold, that comes with the Xbox Live Gold program. With Gold, you get four games each month, two for Xbox 360 and two for Xbox One, which is done much better than PlayStation Plus.
Xbox One has amazing backward compatibility. This means that when you get Xbox 360 games with your subscription, your Xbox One will be able to play them too, with many entertaining games than PlayStation Plus has in its library.
What’s even better, when you get an Xbox 360 game through Xbox Gold Live, it remains in your library even if you cancel the subscription, unlike the PlayStation Plus.
The same can’t be said for the Xbox One games, like Plus, you lose access if you unsubscribe but regain it if you join back again. The Gold discounts are amazing, going as high as 70 percent on some of the biggest games. Microsoft Store offers a sale every week that comes with many discounts.
Xbox Game Pass
Price: $9.99 a month or $120 a year
The best thing still that can come through Xbox is the Xbox Game Pass. There are over 250 games that this program offers to the players every month. It has a huge game library that ranges from the first Xbox to the most recent Xbox One.
You can get a 20% discount on games that you want to keep, and if you want downloadable content for the games then you get a 10% off on those too. It’s a great deal.
There are loads of games in the Game Pass library and it costs just as much as Netflix, but the best part is whenever an Xbox exclusive gets released in the future, it will be on Game Pass from day one. And if it’s a Play Anywhere title, you can play it on your Xbox as well as your PC.
EA Access
Price: $5 a month or $30 for a year
Just like Xbox Live Gold, EA Access has a great library filled with EA games that you can play and download whenever you want. It also has demos of the latest EA titles.
With the awesome backward compatibility of Xbox One, EA Access subscribers can play different Original Xbox and Xbox 360 games like Black or Mass Effect 3.
You cannot have this program on PlayStation but PC gamers can subscribe to Origin Access.
Origin Access
Price: $4 a month or $25 for a year
Origin Access gives you access to more than 160 games. It also offers games other than EA titles such as Batman Arkham Origins, Tyranny, and Mad Max. Both these subscriptions cost the same, $4 a month, or $25 for an entire year. Along with this you also get a 10% discount on any games you would like to keep.
Origin Access Premier
Price: $15 a month or $100 for a year
What’s a costlier option? Try Origin Access Premier. It costs a little more than the regular Origin Access at $15 a month and $100 for the year. With Origin Access Premier, you get 3 more games than you would get on the regular Origin Access.
You also get 10 percent off on Origin. Each new EA game has unique Premier Access content, but that might not be worth it. In Battlefield V’s Premier Access, the players only got a knife and a new outfit. In Madden, you get 50,000 coins and in FIFA 19, you get to pick a top-rated player that you can add to your team.
Cloud Gaming
Steaming services are everywhere. You’ve got Netflix, Amazon, YouTube and even Hulu for steaming your favorite shows and movies, but what about the games?
Worry not because the era of PROPER game streaming has begun. With game streaming, aside from buying games, you get to save money on a PC and a console.
The things you have to spend on are the subscription fees, the – FAST internet, and purchasing the games. Let’s talk about Google Stadia.
Google Stadia
Price: $9.99 a month
Google Stadia is the bright long-term forecast of cloud gaming that we have been waiting for. After having spent years bound to the upgrade cycle of consoles, gamers are finally getting something a better option.
Google Stadia offers you an ever-growing digital library that you can access anywhere, on almost any device you have on you. After having it tested, it is safe to say that when given a good internet connection it is the perfect alternative to gaming consoles.
There are a lot of things done right by Google Stadia. Along with a super enjoyable experience with almost no latency on a decent internet connection, you get on-the-go game streaming that you can access through your laptop, tablets, phones, on your PC and your Chromecast.
If that’s not enough, you get built-in YouTube Live Streaming from Stadia and if you’re getting Premium Edition you will also get a Wi-Fi-connected ergonomic controller with even lower latency.
GeForce Now and PlayStation Now
There definitely is competition out there; such as GeForce Now and PlayStation now, how does Stadia compare? According to reviews from The Verge and other tech blogs, Stadia outperformed PlayStation Now ‘significantly’.
GeForce Now may have a bigger library, but it does not have 4K HDR streaming that Stadia boasts.
Do all of these goodies make Stadia the best streaming service? Not really, for now. Like any other streaming service, the experience will vary from gamer to gamer. Several factors could affect your experiences such as your proximity to the Google servers and the internet speed.
Unlike consoles, that give almost the same performance regardless of where you are, the performance that comes with Stadia may vary from one location to another. Hence, there is no guarantee that you might have the same experience as someone else in a very different location.
Conclusion
It doesn’t matter if you’re starting or are a gamer since childhood, all of the ways given above are amazing in the long run and will have you eventually end up with a large collection of games for you to enjoy. Whether you are a PlayStation, Nintendo, Xbox, or a PC player, up there you will find a way to get a game cheaper than you would from a store.
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