First off I work for a game studio so I may very well be biased.
But games as a whole are pretty economical, especially MMO's and RPGs, you get a LOT of play out of those before you have exhausted everything. A PS3 is more economical than an Xbox (sorry to say but it's kind of true cause of Xbox Live). Sure you have your cost you mentioned before, but there are plenty of games that you can go back and play again many years down the road. I wont tell you how many times I have gone back and played a SNES game, or anything else.
Lets say you get 60 hours of game play out of a game, that is like a dollar per hour. Now if you wait half a year it is probably half the cost. Or the case of one my studios games, after 8 months it was like a third the price. Making it 0.33 dollars an hour. TV lets say you have a satellite cable, you are probably spending about 60 dollars. Then you watch it two hours a day, it has the same entertainment cost per hour as a game of the same scope (brand new). If you can live in the "past" then video games are your far better option. This is assuming you buy a game you would actually like to play. Then again there is also apple games where your return on investment can be more massive.
I wont mention where I work but one of the games the studio did was mentioned here.
Cost of Gaming?
in We Are Not Alone's Blog
A blog by Duke Nukem in General
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First off I work for a game studio so I may very well be biased.
But games as a whole are pretty economical, especially MMO's and RPGs, you get a LOT of play out of those before you have exhausted everything. A PS3 is more economical than an Xbox (sorry to say but it's kind of true cause of Xbox Live). Sure you have your cost you mentioned before, but there are plenty of games that you can go back and play again many years down the road. I wont tell you how many times I have gone back and played a SNES game, or anything else.
Lets say you get 60 hours of game play out of a game, that is like a dollar per hour. Now if you wait half a year it is probably half the cost. Or the case of one my studios games, after 8 months it was like a third the price. Making it 0.33 dollars an hour. TV lets say you have a satellite cable, you are probably spending about 60 dollars. Then you watch it two hours a day, it has the same entertainment cost per hour as a game of the same scope (brand new). If you can live in the "past" then video games are your far better option. This is assuming you buy a game you would actually like to play. Then again there is also apple games where your return on investment can be more massive.
I wont mention where I work but one of the games the studio did was mentioned here.