The cost of living made me sell my PS5 – Reader’s Feature

A reader is concerned about the ongoing energy and cost of living crisis but admits there may be other reasons for selling his console.

Every time I turn the television on, or glance at a news site, things seem to get worse. First it was just the energy crisis, then it was the pound against the dollar, and now it’s the mini-budget that is going to make everything even worse. I’m not a rich man but I wouldn’t previously have said I was poor either. And yet over the last few months I have really begun to worry about my financial position and what exactly I’m spending my money on.

I’m sure I’m not alone in this. Families all across the country, and the world, are in the same position and forced to deal with not only the situation as it is but politicians doing nothing or actively making things worse. The only attempts to help are patronising websites telling you not to have the heating on as much or take quicker showers, as if that’s going to make up the difference.

Clearly not any one thing will, but I’ve tried to think of savings everywhere that I can and so I came to the decision to sell my PlayStation 5. Not really because of the energy costs, although that is a factor, but simply because buying the games costs too much money (and I can probably get quite a bit for selling the console).

I will admit though, that this was not a decision entirely due to the cost of living crisis. That’s the reason I decided to do it but once I started thinking about the decision I realised that it was easier than I expected and that, really, I’d begun to fall out of love with video games. I don’t know that I would’ve sold the PlayStation 5 without this as the catalyst but now it’s happened I feel almost… relieved?

I first began to realise there was a problem when I couldn’t get into Elden Ring, despite enjoying the previous Dark Souls games. There were two problems, the first being how long it would’ve taken me to beat the game, and the second the fact that it was all so familiar, despite technically being a brand new franchise.

I’ve found this same problem with so many games recently (Elden Ring probably didn’t help itself with me because I bought and played Demon’s Souls not long before), where everything is beginning to seem so predictable and repetitive. That doesn’t mean the games aren’t good, but things like Horizon Forbidden West and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart made very little impression on me, simply because it all seemed so familiar.

There are indie games, I know, before anyone says that, but even then, the truly imaginative games are lost amidst a sea of Metrodivanias and roguelikes. In my experience indie games are barely any more original than AAA games, they’re just repetitive with different things.

I don’t want to get anyone down, because I do still consider myself a gamer and enjoy reading about the industry and its games, even if the thought of everything being owned by three different companies only adds to the feeling of decline and homogenisation.

My hope is that once this latest financial crisis is over, I’ll probably buy a new console and have some fun seeing what I’ve missed. Whether we’ll be onto the PlayStation 6 by then I don’t know but at the moment it feels strangely liberating to be without a games machine.

In these trying times I don’t need to be spending £70 on a video game and if interest rates do shoot up next year, I don’t want it to become a choice between paying the mortgage and playing the next God Of War.

By reader Westley