I typically won't buy a game brand new unless it's a game I really want and it's mainly an online gaming experience rather than a single player game. Games like Modern Warfare 2, The Street Fighter IV games, and Battlefield all were basically online games and I'm more inclined to get those on release just to keep up with the community for the first few weeks or so. The oonly other games I've bought on release lately have been God of War 3 and Bayonetta and I even traded some stuff in towards Bayonetta.

For me, I know I'm not really going to get into most games and if I do like I did with God of War III, I'll usually be done with it fast enough to be able to get a decent amount back selling it on ebay or amazon. I still haven't beat Uncharted 2 and that's a great game but I just couldn't get that into it and by now it can probably be found for $30 or so, so I'll just wait the few months and get it cheap.

Not only that but games go down in price WAY faster than they used to back even in the PSX era. I remember it would take two years or so for a game like Mario Kart to go down $20 back in the SNES days, and that's not even MSRP, that's just for a retailers deal. Now a game like Battlefield 2, which came out in February, can be found fairly easily for around $40 or so just 3 months later or so.