Still Hate It

Black Friday, I still hate it.  The one single day out of the entire year that people have to shop on and the retailers advertise on, you'd think they would at least spread their intended sale across several days, rather than squeezing it all into one single shopping day.

I still cannot get over the memory of an outing one year.  This lady had a PS2 and some games in the shopping cart.  Yet I know that advertisement all too well.  The deal has been posted before, albeit with different games.  Yet that idiot chose that day, of all the days in the world, to buy that gaming system when it's been similarly offered before.

Did I have anything to get during that day?  Not really.  Online distribution store Steam was holding several deals throughout the Thanksgiving holiday weekend to spur online purchases.  I chose to wait things out a bit to see if they dare to compete aggressively against some of the other retailers out there.  Specifically, a deal for Left 4 Dead 2.  Quite a while ago, I managed to pick up Left 4 Dead for US$25.  At the time, the regular price was $50 so getting it for half off was a good buy.  It didn't get any better than that, at least for that time.  Amazon then posted their Left 4 Dead 2 offer: $30.  Dell and GameStop offered the same, which makes buying from either stores virtually indifferent.  Amazon's deal was considered better, if you factor out the time it takes for them to ship the game out and have it delivered.  For where I live, there is no tax applied to the purchase and shipping is free courtesy of Amazon's $25 minimum limit.  But $30 isn't the price I was aiming for.  It's a good price but I was holding out to see what Valve and Steam would do over the weekend.  And like I expected, to spur the holiday spending spree, they offered Left 4 Dead 2 for a day at a special price.  Except, the price they offered was a complete let-down.  Instead of beating the competition in price, their Left 4 Dead 2 special was dead cold.  The price was over $35 and the savings was very dismal.  So my next step is to get it from GameStop, locally.

Getting the game locally saves me the trouble of having to wait for them to deliver the game.  So I picked out a store and went there.  Oddly enough, it was the last copy they had.  Funny, I seem to be having a string of bad luck with GameStop lately.  Twice now the game I get happens to be the last in their stock.  Bleh.  But Left 4 Dead 2 was purchased for 30 and I made sure that everything was included.  Actually, the only major concern is the key is unused and in the case.  I could care less about the install disc since I can always download the game from Steam itself once the game is registered to my account.  Ah, the advantage of having Steam...

Saturday's Steam sale was posted.  Within it, Trine for half off.  Having tried the demo, it was one of the few games that I wanted to get but opted out of paying full price for it.  At $10, it's hard to beat.  I bought World of Goo for $5 and it's worth every penny.  Playing Trine was a blast.  It's a great platformer that I am sure I will spend quite a lot of time on.

Sunday's Steam sale was posted.  And Steam strikes again, now offering TrackMania United Forever for half off at $20.  That's another game that I have been itching to get but not willing to pay full price for it.  Having played tons of Nations Forever, getting United Forever was worth it.  Getting it for less than $20 would have been much better but half of its regular price is the limit of how much I am willing to spend on it.

So when Monday came, Steam posted its final sales.  Unfortunately, none of the titles listed were of any interests for me.  To be honest, I had hopes they would offer Burnout Paradise for half.  But I guess I can live with that for a little while longer.

I still hate Black Friday.  It should not come to just one single day just to get people spending.  It would have been a lot better for me, as a laid-back consumer, had they spread the sale item over the course of the week or on certain days.  At least it would have been a lot less traffic and a lot less people crowded around.  People camping since Tuesday and Wednesday just to be the first in line?  C'mon, that's the most retarded thing I have ever heard.

For me, I've done all the personal shopping that I wanted.  Part of them were acquired prior to Black Friday and the deals, while early, were very good at the time it was posted.  It's a shame that people would bother to wake up at 1AM to 2AM just to arrive at a store that is opening at 3AM.  It's idiotic and it's lame.  A lot of people already have some form of access to some of these posted deals.  Yet if they are able to find it online early and plan out their shopping, why couldn't they just get their items early rather than Friday?  There were plenty of deals ranging from pots and pans to HDTVs to gaming consoles to PCs and PC parts.  All of them can be had at prices that rivals or beats what retailers offer.  Plus you don't have to wait in line and deal with morons.