Instant Games Collection / Games with Gold
If you have a PS4 or Xbox One, you’ll most likely already be well-acquainted with the free games that you can grab from PS Plus’ Instant Games Collection and Xbox Lives’ Games with Gold. However, for those of you newcomers who might want to be desperate to extend their game libraries without breaking the bank, this is the best place to start. Each month, you’ll get at least two free PS4 or Xbox One games chosen randomly. While these may sometimes be indie experiences, they’re still well worth checking out. You may also get PS Vita games that are cross-play with PS4, meaning you can download them for your system. As for Xbox One owners, all 360 games that go up on Games with Gold are also part of Xbox One’s backward compatible library, so you’re basically getting four free games. As long as your subscription stays active, you’ll always have access to them. If you find yourself playing online a lot, this is a steal for a subscription you’d need, anyway.
Sales
When people think of sales for video games, they most likely think about the Steam sale. Yep, a few times a year, Steam slashes the prices of a ton of games by up to 90%. However, it’s not just PC gamers who can take advantage of these online sales. Both PSN and Xbox Live often discount games throughout the year. For example, at this very moment, PSN and Xbox Live have horror games on sale for players wanting to get into the Halloween festivities. Though these tend not to offer deals quite as lucrative as Steam, it’s still a good way to pick up a bunch of games for way less than you’d normally pay. Taking advantage of the Steam sale is the easiest. Simply add any game you’re slightly interested in to your wishlist and then wait for the sale to begin. Have a bit of money put to one side and then grab all of the games for a fraction of the price. Just make sure you don’t end up with an overwhelming backlog.
Twitter Competitions
Twitter isn’t just a place to share your thoughts and opinions, it can also be an incredibly useful tool for picking up some games for free. In an attempt to celebrate the release of the latest titles, a bunch of retailers around the world are often posting up competitions for you to win a copy of a brand new release. There’s no catch to it all, really, just answer the questions or submit your funniest or coolest pun or gaming memory to them (or something to that effect). Once that’s all out the way, cross your fingers and hope for the best. It’s by no means a bonafide way of expanding your library on the cheap, but if you’re happy to try these out, sometimes you can actually save yourself a ton of money. This doesn’t just apply to retailers, either. Often, developers, publishers, or personalities in the industry will have codes they’re looking to give away to happy homes. Got to be in it to win it, right?
Do Some Searching
Yes, we’re aware that this probably seems incredibly obvious, but hear us out. While you’re likely to hit up your local retailer or favorite website to check out their deals, be willing to broaden your horizons. If you’ve heard of a trusted site that you’ve been meaning to check out, give it a look, or sometimes fellow players are wanting to sell a bundle of games on eBay just to clear out some space. Even better, check out your local Craigslist. For one reason or another, you’ll find some incredible deals on there for both hardware and software. Even if you pay a little more for some games you didn’t want, you’ll likely be able to make your money back by selling them on yourself. Don’t forget to also take advantage of retailers when it comes to Black Friday, too. If you’ve yet to pick up some of the AAA titles to release this year, the day of bargains often has a bunch of these on some crazy discounts. Best get saving!
EA Access and Ubi 30
While these are two different kinds of things, they’ll both offer up a bunch of free games. Starting with EA Access (as well as Origin Access), you can pay $4.99 and get access to an instant games collection of some pretty great games from the past few years. You’ll also be able to try out upcoming EA releases before release date with a 10-hour trial for each game. For PC owners, Origin Access offers up 30 free games in the Vault for you, too, and you’ll get all the benefits of EA Access on PC. As for Ubi 30, this is a celebration of Ubisoft’s 30th anniversary. This gives players a free Ubisoft title every month on PC. Unfortunately, it’s only got three months left until it ends, but that’s still three free games you can add to your PC games library. It doesn’t cost you a thing either, which makes it all the better.
Giveaways!
Giveaways are great and sites are often a big fan of them. With new releases flying out all over the place in these recent months, sites will be eager to offer the fans a chance at winning a new release as a way of saying thank you just for being fans. If you’ve been looking at picking up some of the biggest and best releases, it’s always worthwhile visiting your favorite sites, checking their Twitter feeds or Facebook pages and seeing if they’ve got anything to offer. For example, today we’ve just closed our giveaway competition for a copy of Civilization VI, and we have a Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 one opening up in its wake. Be sure to keep checking back with ourselves and your other favorite sites to see what other freebies we’ve got to giveaway.
Published: Oct 26, 2016 03:20 pm