Before I ever had a gaming PC, I would hear the word "Steam" mentioned a bunch on various forums, and I knew that it was something to do with buying digital downloads, but other than that, I didn't pay much attention to it. I would hear people talking about Steam sales and such, but knew that Steam was PC only, so never bothered to look at any of it.

Now that I have a gaming PC, Steam Sales (as well as some of the Amazon and GamersGate sales) are my lifeblood for my modern gaming collection. Getting triple A games for $4.99 each doesn't suck. Yeah, the games are much older games now, and have been out for a very long time, but still. On Steam, the prices can be ridiculously low, and if I was a console-only type gamer who looked in a Steam sale thread, I would be wondering why the heck Sony and MS and Nintendo never do sales like that.


Portal 2 -------------------------------- $4.99
Borderlands ----------------------------- $4.99
Rage ------------------------------------ $9.99
Deus Ex Human Revolution ---------------- $7.50
Darksiders ------------------------------- $4.99
Alan Wake ------------------------------- $7.49
Fallout: New Vegas ---------------------- $4.99
Bioshock 2 ------------------------------ $4.99
Dead Space 2 ---------------------------- $4.99
Mirror's Edge ----------------------------- $4.99


All of those titles listed below were triple A blockbusters at one time on console. All of those games are old now. Some much more older than others. Still if you tried to buy these games digitally from PSN or Xbox Live, no way in hell you'd be paying those prices. The lowest stuff like that goes for on those services is closer to $15 on the low end. You just don't see AAA games for 5 bucks on the consoles. Of course, the big difference is that a gaming computer costs about 4 times as much as a console does (when the console is in it's later period in life) Even when the console is brand new (Xbox 360 $399.99), a gaming rig costs about double that. So, it's one of those pick your poison things. Either pay thru the ass to build the gaming rig, or pay thru the ass buying the indvidual games.


I was just curious as to what console-only people thought about the whole Steam sale thing...