What if the gaming market bottoms out?

Are you one who collects for future resale value?

If so, what will you do if the next great depression hits and people struggle to buy clothes and food, much less luxury entertainment items like video games and systems? Are you prepared to holding onto those games and systems for the long haul?

Long haul, I suppose. Which won't be much of a struggle as long as I enjoy playing the games.

I do not like owning expensive games. Most of the classic Atari games seem to not be very playable. So I tend to trade or sell to buy what I want.

onthinice wrote:I do not like owning expensive games. Most of the classic Atari games seem to not be very playable. So I tend to trade or sell to buy what I want.

So you mainly collect to play, it sounds like. I am confused though: You do or do not buy Atari games because they are 'not very playable'?

As for owning expensive games, I don't, as a rule, pay more than Goodwill prices for most of my games. Have a large collection, but haven't paid more than $3 for most of my games.

My bad. The classic Atari games that are rare or expensive are the ones I avoid. I have spent a few dollars more than I should have for Snoopy and the Red Baron & Star Wars: the Death Star Battle. Both fun games for me.

It is funny that Atari, Coleco and Intellivision rare games are usually not that fun to play but can be expensive to purchase. While later systems like the Nes and Super Nes have more comon games that are fun but can be expensive to buy.

The later Mario games, Earthbound, Secret of Mana and the Donkey Kong Country games come to mind.

I hadn't given any thought to the market bottoming out until you mentioned a second Great Depression, since the industry is innoculated against another 1983.

Although I collect games to have fun and not to resell, I do envision a possible (though unlikely) scenario where games become my only currency.

The problem is that with modern gaming and everyone going the direction of downloads, there will be nothing to trade or sell in the not-too-distant future.

TrekMD wrote:The problem is that with modern gaming and everyone going the direction of downloads, there will be nothing to trade or sell in the not-too-distant future.

All the more reason why physical-media games will be valuable at some point, the same way the old Infocom games are so valuable that still have all the "feelies."

I have a PS4 and I try to get my games as physical releases whenever they're available for that very reason.