My first exposure to gaming (that I remember anyway) was when I was 5 years old. That Christmas, my parents bought my sister and me a NES. I have been hooked since. I’ve owned most of Nintendo’s consoles up to the Nintendo DSi. That was a long time ago though. Sure, I wanted to get more consoles, but it seemed like the more I bought them, the less I used them. My last Nintendo purchase was the first Nintendo Switch.

It was then I realised that there was a big problem. The price of the console was pretty hefty and I bought games, played them for a little while, and then would put it down for months. Gaming, in general, is really expensive here in Australia. I was easily paying around $100 per game, playing it for a few hours, and then forgetting it existed. These were first-party games, too.

I finally gave up once I noticed that Nintendo started charging people three times and full price for the same game on separate consoles with no or a few changes. I decided to pass on the Switch 2 for this reason and my Switch 1 has been sitting in the same place for about a year now. I pick it up about 4 times per year to play something like Animal Crossing for about 30 minutes.

Now that the prices for everything technology-related is going up due to the gross overuse of AI, other console makers are raising their prices. I bought an Xbox Series X for about $700 when it was released. Now, the price for the same console is around $850. Do I have to remind you that this is for the same console that was released several years ago?!

I started playing Xbox from the Xbox 360, but I think I am done. The price for new consoles, games, and subscriptions keep going up. You know what else is going up? The price for electricity, water, food, and everything else is going up too. Financial stress is starting to show its ugly face and now, it’s a question whether gaming is worth the money.

Sure, I’m getting older but gaming is a way for me to step away from everybody stressors and my stressful job and immerse myself in a world where that stress disappears, even for a few hours.

The Steam Machine was something I was interested in and thought it might be affordable. Here in Australia, it’s not. It’s easily $1,500 and I’m not prepared to pay that much for something that is underpowered and overpriced. It has a nice form factor, but its internals make it not worth it. I’ll pass on that.

That’s going to be the theme going forward: I’ll pass. Gaming has gotten to be something that is too expensive. I guess I will need to find a new hobby or something… or just hold on to my consoles for a bit longer and hope support for it doesn’t disappear quickly.

Anyway, rant over.