Shopping for video games (image: Ernst Vikne)
Following my BBC Radio 4 spot about Family Gaming on a budget, I seem to have become the first port of call for friends and family looking to save money on video games. These various requests have meant I’ve spent quite a lot of time trawling through Amazon’s marketplace and various other second hand or discount websites.
Then last week I discovered Amazon Warehouse — a bit behind the curve, I think — which has turned out to be a great way to pass the responsibility for finding deals back to parents. For instance a simple Amazon Warehouse search for DS games returns a list of titles currently on sale. All that remains to do is to work through the list identifying those that would be a good fit for your family.
The bargain bug has also taken hold in my own household and my kids have started their own hunt using Amazon Warehouse to try to find better deals than each other. I recently picked up Zelda Spirit Tracks and Pilotwings Resort for much less than I expected. You do have to check back for these deals regularly as the best prices seem to go quite quickly, but it seems to be worth the time.
To help the kids with their search I’ve setup the following searches for the different consoles we use. The sheer volume makes it hard to work through all the games individually:
My kids now look through these each time they have pocket money to spend. They order the results by price and trawl through the list until they have spent their allowance. This has not only meant some cheap gaming, but also that we have started playing older games — GBA titles on the DS lite and PS2 titles on our PlayStation 3 (having an old launch version of the console has the advantage of good backward compatibility).
We’ve not had any problems with the games we’ve purchased, but it’s good to know that Amazon Warehouse is also supported by Amazon’s excellent returns and shipping policy.
Header Image from flickr/iboy (Ernst Vikne).
