Oh man, I'm looking at all my LRG PS4 games and this hurts. Outside of Shantae and Firewatch, I don't think any of them are worth squat. What I don't get is why it seems like nearly everything they put on the NS skyrockets but most of the PS4 collection is worth less then it's release price.
Playstation consoles always have a massive decline in game value near the end of their life. I've picked the bones of many dead or dying systems in the market... it happens every single console cycle.
There was a time when having a "rare" game meant something because it was such a "rare" occurrence... but with so many low print games and people buying them without regard to quality... rarity has become common. So the demand for on rarity alone doesn't matter. The game actually needs to be stellar. IF you look at the history of games and what is low print... much of that is shovelware because that's all the publisher was willing to spend as they had no faith in the game because it really wasn't that great.
There are of course exceptions, like Shantae which was an original IP but Capcom wasn't going to mass produce it and watch it rot on shelves... so it got the shoveware level of production but because the game was exceptional it didn't fall into the obscurity a lot of games produced on that level end up.
There also used to be a barrier that your only option to play a rare game was physical... now you can just pay a couple bucks and play it digital... and with a large portion of all LRG releases for PS4 being games that were free on PS+ or have had significant sales on the ps store... that eats at the demand for most of these random indie games unless of course they are in super well loved franchises. Those games, if they have tanked... will come back in value much like RPG's, SHMUPS, and other genre with a massive fanbase tend to recover.
Shantae games on PS4 doing well makese sense, look at the demand for the series in the secondary market. It's a series with a fanbase that continues to expand. Some games are so good people want to own a physical copy regardless of how cheap the digital gets.
Firewatch, my guess is the game is just that damned good and people that play it decide they must own a physical copy. So that has prices up as there is a demand. Which is pretty much what you'd expect for a game that is well loved regardless of how limited it's print was.
I think the thing to do going forward is to evaluate why you are buying games and forget to ever include the "rare" or "limited" nature of the game unless it's a game series you love and you know the game is going to have a limited print. Then, factor it it as to when you buy it, but don't let rarity alone be a factor in wanting to buy the game in the first place. To many people got hyped on collecting rare shit... and completely forgot that it doesn't matter how rare something is if there's no demand for it.
Why is the switch doing so much better? It's a current plaform that hasn't been replaced by a successor. Demand for indie games that aren't super well loved will disappear. Right now there are still enough collectors and people bamboozled by "rarity" that the games are doing well. But switch has another edge over PS4... that is being a system that can go from console to handheld in a second. So it's tapped a broader market of people that don't want to only be locked to the tv at home to play their games. So don't be surprised if demand continues to hold... especially if Switch 2 has full BC with it. PS5 BC I think will help a lot fo PS4 games do better than games on the PS3 did... but only for the great games and games in specific genre.
![Zenax[zd]](/data/avatars/m/166/166897.jpg?1700966672){kind=avatar}
off", kept the money and retired to the Philippines?
