I’ve had less extra cash to spend on gaming in 2025 than usual for one simple reason: babies are expensive.
Yup, I’m expecting my first kid in the next few weeks, and so most of my spending since we found out has been on getting the nursery ready and buying all the necessary supplies like diapers, onesies, and swaddles. Seriously, there’s so much needed for a baby that I didn’t realize.
It’s exciting, and I don’t miss spending a lot of money on games. But aside from the joy of impending fatherhood, there’s another reason why I haven’t felt the loss much.
Low-cost gaming has never been better. Between services like Xbox Game Pass and a surge of developers exploring more mid-range pricing, fantastic experiences like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Hollow Knight: Silksong are available for significantly less than the price of a new AAA game.
Aside from brand-new releases, there is a massive backlog of truly phenomenal games that I have yet to play, and these older games are easier to obtain than ever before. I’ve spent time revisiting titles I only briefly played, such as Slay the Spire, and have sunk dozens of hours into the “complete” editions of other games.
It’s a great time to be a gamer on a budget. Whether you’re just entering the hobby or your controller calluses are long hardened, I guarantee you can have more fun with a handful of lower-cost titles than the most recent carbon-copy $80 FPS.
Free to play games are actually really good
It used to be that a free-to-play game would be middling at best or a microtransaction-riddled hellscape at worst. While the latter hasn’t changed, there are a lot of free-to-play options on the market that can provide hours of entertainment, and many developers have gotten about creating fun experiences that aren’t pay-to-win.
Take Mecha Break, for instance; I had an absolute blast piloting a giant robot around a map and swapping between the arena-style PvP and the looter-shooter style gameplay. If you’re jonesing for Battlefield-style gameplay, Delta Force is arguably a lot better than even Battlefield 2042. And of course, there’s a universe of gacha-style games in the form of Genshin Impact, Zenless Zone Zero, and others like them.
Epic hasn’t let up in its support of Fortnite, either, and the game is basically unrecognizable from when it launched. For gamers who want a cozier experience, Infinity Nikki seals the deal with absolutely gorgeous graphics.
A quick glance at Steam reveals over 7,000 free-to-play games. Sure, a lot of them are likely shovelware, but then you have options like Warframe and Dota 2 that offer enough content to entertain you for years.
Almost all of these games have a battle pass of some kind, and if you get deeply involved in the community, you could sink far more than a normal game into cosmetics. But that’s the beauty of it: you don’t have to, unless you want to. As long as you have can get your hands on a console or computer capable of running these titles, you could play free-to-play games for years to come.
Streaming services have seen Godzilla-sized library growth
Xbox Game Pass has a rotating library of games that keeps getting better with time. There are multiple tiers, too, so even if you can’t foot the bill for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, you can still find plenty to enjoy in the Core tier. Core offers a selection of 25 curated, high-quality games, while Game Pass Ultimate has more than 500 titles to pick from.
And while the higher tiers of services like Game Pass and GeForce Now might not be as affordable, the inclusion of cloud streaming means gamers don’t necessarily need a console. As long as they have reliable internet, games can be streamed from the cloud with little to no lag. I’ve played Game Pass quite a few times on my phone while on the go, and while the smaller screen took some adjustment, it was still a fun experience in the end.
Spending anywhere from $10 to $20 monthly on streaming services is a lot more affordable than shelling out for a single game at $80 or more.
Developers are starting to lower prices
While Ubisoft and Activision might still price games at $80 or more, more and more independent studios — and even AAA names like Bethesda — are pricing titles at less than the going rate. My game of the year so far has been Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and it retails for just $50. It offered an experience on par with my first playthrough of Final Fantasy VII on the PSOne. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is also $50.
If neither of those appeals to you, Elden Ring Nightreign is just $40. And then there’s the long-awaited Hollow Knight: Silksong, which just launched a couple of weeks ago for $20.
Even if you can’t drop a few hundred each month on games, you can still experience titles that will stick with you for a long time. At this point, almost all platforms are easily accessible. The only holdout is Nintendo, and I wouldn’t hold on my breath on it becoming more affordable anytime soon.
