Game prices move on a calendar. The same game can cost $60 in September, $40 in November, and $20 in December — not because anything changed about the game, but because the industry discounts on a schedule. Learn the schedule and you'll stop paying full price by accident.
Steam's big four
Steam runs four major seasonal sales a year: Spring (March), Summer (late June), Autumn (late November, overlapping Black Friday), and Winter (late December into January). The Summer and Winter sales are the deepest — this is when back-catalog games hit historic lows. If a Steam game you want is only 20% off in October, wait: the Autumn sale is weeks away.
Console storefront rhythms
PlayStation Store and the Nintendo eShop run their own sale cadences, often aligned with the same seasons. Sony does a big Days of Play sale in late spring/early summer plus Black Friday and holiday sales. Nintendo's eShop sales are less predictable but cluster around the same holidays. Physical retailers — Amazon, Best Buy, Target — compete hardest during Black Friday week, and that's when console game discs hit their lowest prices of the year.
Black Friday week: the main event
For console games especially, the week of Black Friday remains the single best buying window of the year. Retailers use games as loss leaders to drive traffic, which produces discounts that don't appear any other time. If you're building a holiday gift list, this is the week — our gift guide covers the strategy.
Launch windows and the patience curve
Most games follow a predictable decay: full price at launch, first real discount (20-30%) within two to three months, 50% off within six to nine months for most titles, and historic lows (60-75% off) by the first or second seasonal sale after launch. Exceptions exist — Nintendo first-party games famously barely discount — but the curve holds for the vast majority of releases. The question is never "is this game worth $60," it's "is this game worth $60 to me right now, or $25 in six months?"
How we use the calendar
Our weekly deal watch weighs sale timing explicitly: a decent discount right before a major seasonal sale has to clear a higher bar, because waiting is likely to pay off. When you see a deal on our front page in early November, it beat the "just wait for Black Friday" test — which is exactly when that test matters most.