The true cost of a lifetime of gaming

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

How much do you reckon you’ve spent on games in your life? A few quid? A few hundred? Absolutely no idea?

That final option was my immediate answer, and probably yours too, so the results of a recent survey by online gaming community GameStrata may shock you. Brace yourselves.

The average gamer will spend more than US$30,500 between the ages of 18 and 48. Yes, thirty thousand dollars. That’s more than £15,000. On video games.

Now that figure covers both games and gaming hardware, and the survey does only encompass a community of dedicated online gamers, but it’s still astonishing when lumped together like that. I could have bought a new car, put a deposit down on a house, or enoyed the holiday of a lifetime. Instead I took Bromley to League One mid-table mediocrity and shot a few pigeons in Liberty City. Depressing, isn’t it.

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Why PC gaming should be celebrated

Wednesday, June 18th, 2008

We’re an argumentative bunch at Pro. Finding two people who agree on anything, even the colour of the carpet, is something of a chore but put a new piece of hardware in front of us and it’s worth ducking for cover unless you’re a fan of vitriol showers. However, aside from the green issues (brilliantly covered in comrade Sparkes’ green gadgets feature this month), the one thing that’s brought us closest to laughably inept fisticuffs is the hideously expensive GeForce GTX 280.

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