Gamers need one sale to rule them all and feature all the discounts

Dec 22, 2012 20:51 GMT  ·  By

The winter holiday season is upon us and, for gamers, this usually means a wide variety of great sales, promotions, discounts, and offers, across all sorts of platforms, ranging from the PC to the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, or even the recently released Nintendo Wii U.

Sadly, while all these promotions are great since you get to save a lot of money and complete your games collection, their big number can get quite confusing.

For example, only on the PC we've reported about the Steam Winter Holiday sale, GOG's End of the World and Winter Sale, not to mention various other discounts ran by GameFly, GreenManGaming, and other such websites.

Things are also quite complex on consoles. While both Microsoft and Nintendo are running their own sales, Sony is organizing all sorts of promotions across the continents. In Europe, we have the 12 Deals of Christmas and the Festive sale, while North Americans can enjoy the Holiday Essentials and the Play Days one.

While this means that you have enough variants to choose from, it also means that you need to sift through each promotion, see where you can score the biggest discount, get it, and then start the whole process all over again.

For example, Sony discounts Hitman: Absolution by 50% on the European PlayStation Store but Steam also had a price cut for the same game, alongside others in the franchise. If you have both a PS3 and a gaming PC, then you need to decide what service will get your money.

My idea is quite simple: one Winter Sale to rule them all. Gamers should be able to enjoy a single promotion across the PC, PS3, Xbox 360 and even the Wii U with the same prices no matter the territory.

Sadly, even as I type this I pretty much know it won't be adopted, as console manufacturers are extremely picky about their promotions and many don't even want owners of other devices to take advantage of the same deals they're offering.

This is a shame, as it only ends up hurting gamers who just want to score some great discounts.