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Just got a new phone which has more memory than my old one so I thought I'd try the FG app... Very impressed, smooth to use, clean.. well done to all involved 👍

I use basic YT a lot and just ignore the ads. I definitely wouldn't pay extra for ad-free or HD. Being a child of the 60's I became immune to adverts early in life. I'm watching the Sunderland v Newcastle cup tie at the moment (good game, cracking atmosphere) and I'll adopt my usual halftime tactic... make a cuppa! 😂

Don't get me wrong, my statement is factual and with no emotional connection to it. I think its always good to understand how life works - from a 100% business perspective is a shrewd move. From a moral, ethical point of view, its not needed in any way. Amazon have enough money in my eyes as they have effectively created one of the best way for people to shop in 2024 - again, I say 'best' knowing its subjective, but I mean in a factual sense because we benefit from ease of use, although I really do miss going to Gamestation and browsing all the physical games available. I think they've been one of the few that are able to speculate to accumulate companies, that allow them to offset costs from different bits like films, tv series creations, through people sending in Prime memberships when I bet most people don't even make full use of quick deliveries like we do in our house. I think maybe I should have led with this as when you start comparing services, then you start to create the thoughts if a subscription is something I should pay for or not. Against Netflix, Disney and the rest, none of them give me what I regularly use on Amazon. And as you say Rich, weirdly, Amazon seems to be cheaper, not many restrictions to watching their service, etc. Its a good thread to get peoples views on this stuff. I'm still interested in if anyone has a free service like YouTube, do they pay to get rid of ads at all? Just a really interesting subject as years ago, FG was gonna have ads on here but I never wanted them but you then do have to rely on the goodness of peoples hearts to care about being around and donating to keep stuff rolling. Clearly the big corps don't need to do that as much know but its clear to see adverts must be an absolute monumental money spinner in this day and age for them.

I have cancelled my subscription and it comes to an end later this month, it's ok saying it's just £3 a month but multiply that by the current number of people that use it and that is a ridiculous amount of additional income, income that Bezos certainly does not need, think about how much money Amazon bring in do they really need it or is it profiteering and banking on people to be of the same opinion as you Lee? I think there is a reason why they have just said adverts so far as well, they are being quite clever I think in not revealing anymore than that, we don't know currently what form these adverts will take, whether or not they will be skippable and the length of them, if it's just typical adverts much like we would see on tv then the value of our traditional TV with BBC and ITV begin to look better value for money. I also think this is not about Amazon making better products as they are suggesting but recouping some of the losses they have made on some of the big tv shows such as the rings of power. I mean why isn't there an option to just have prime delivery, I only use the video and music because it is there but I would happily pay less and just have the delivery. In fact half the products you buy on there now are no longer 1 day delivery which was it's initial draw, the amazon prime subscription is being watered down more and more and I think the incredible value it started out being is no longer there.

Crap game with a lot of missing Spuds, still a great goal by Porro, I'll take it 👏

A couple of things initially @Luseth - I think its fantastic you are trying to find ways to keep having a positive life and find some savings from somewhere, life is definitely too short to sit here thinking shoulda, woulda, coulda. In the same breath its a real shame that your hobby that you seem to love so much has to take the hit. If it was me, I'd change the goals to be more like 'principles'. This way you make decisions based on all of the above but it makes you feel like if for some reason a top game you really want comes out, you don't have to feel like you are restricting yourself. Thats just my 2p on that. With me, I always try to not pay full price too with the latest games we play. I'll still get some games through the year on release but thats usually kept for games we've all been talking about and I'm excited to play day 1 with lots of other FGers. I procrastinate naturally, which is truly annoying for me but probably means I don't spend all my money straight away. I can look and talk about a game for months and still not pick it up until I finally get it in the basket....and then sometimes wait for days/weeks again 🤣 Outside of those moments though, I've restricted myself over many years with games, lucky to pick up so many of my retro games at such a cheap price out of bargain bucket Gamestation all those years ago. My hobbies are gaming, FG, then football for my daughters team and Rovers. And with other things, like food, drink, etc, I've just never been into it all so much so games is really where I spend my money...and on FG stuff of course for my stupid sins 🙈😅

With S42 complete and being quality tested many of the devs have switched over to work on the main game, and are bringing lots of excellent features from the single player. Should be a great year ahead.

I didn't buy Dead Space, Hogwarts Legacy, EAFC, MW3, Alan Wake 2 or Diablo 4 as expected so I instantly saved over £350 and instead mostly played (older) titles I have in my Steam library either revisiting, or previously not played and also picked up some bargains. I don't think I will ever buy a AAA game on release ever again unless it's of the masterpiece standard and I have enough time to play it at launch. I don't own PS+ or Xbox Live or any other subscription services so I save a lot there and things like this can really add up especially if you throw in other services like Spotify or Prime. Although these AAA-type games sell really well, many gamers seem to be holding back these days and that's down to the increased pricing and degrading of quality. The new Diablo 4 DLC could very well cost $100 which is absolutely disgusting so for the future I am avoiding these rip-off live services without much consideration. Recently I've played MGS3, MGS2 and Warcraft 3 and I've got more value and entertainment out of those than any major release will provide.

I have so many unplayed games I can't justify buying new ones. I really really want to play Baldurs Gate 3 but I'm waiting until next Christmas I think. I still haven't played Divinity 2 properly, so no. I'm dying to play Stalker 2 but anything else this year will need to wait for a sale. Early access games are paying off for me. Ready Or Not cost me £15 and now it's full price, plus Zero Seivert, Tarkov, DayZ and many others, good games that get better and better have all been on form lately. Plus I just discovered Half Life 2 on Steamdeck is amazing. Still plenty more old games I want to try out on that device.

I agree about Amazon being the best for money, fast delivery, video, music, pictures....I'm sure there's more. Netflix now is so expensive it's ridiculous, if you want the Ultra HD subscription it's around £18 a month which is stupid. Disney is a pretty good price baring in mind how much there is to watch on there and the fact they get new films pretty soon after release. It's ridiculous that they're adding adverts, they definitely don't need to do that with the money they make. I read that Netflix has increased the amount for a subscription because more people were buying subscriptions....that doesn't make any sense, surely the more people who have it the cheaper it should be?

Received an email yesterday saying no charge increase but adverts will be played from Feb 5th. If you don't want to see them an ad-free option of £2.99 a month is available. I don't think many are bothered about adverts. Sure, its annoying but as long as its similar to youtube where you can skip them and it isn't every 10 minutes into a film, I can cope with that. Clever marketing though offering just £3 a month which pretty much every human being earning can afford, even though they are already taking the Prime membership off you for the facility of using Video alongside Prime deliveries. Taking everything into account (I can't beleive I'm saying this) but as subscriptions go for what you get back, the Amazon Prime one is the one we just wouldn't get rid because it gives you something across multiple services (Next-Day delivery, etc). Just wondered what other people thought about this? Do people pay stuff like £3 a month to get rid of ads because its less than buying one coffee a month?

Can't imagine why people use "dodgy" boxes. This streaming/subscription thing has got out of hand. However there will be enough people out there who justify it by saying it's one less coffee a month to cover Amy losses from people cancelling.

It's all I ever use.

So with this new year I am thinking about my expenditure on video games, I am in a position in life where I feel I should have some actual savings, couple that with wanting to convert our garage and I am looking at where I can cut back some of my expenditure. One of those is gaming, I spend money on retro games, I like to buy games & consoles brand new and I also have the PS subscription. So my goals this year - - To not buy a single brand new game at full price - To limit my retro purchases each month - To not buy a single piece of hardware (with the exception of controllers / headsets should they fail on me) My question to you guy's is how much do you spend on this hobby, do y ou limit what you spend? Are you conscious of the amount you spend on a particular game and the time you spend with that game?

I got drunk and spent over 2k on a pc etc one Friday night so I'm not the best comment on gaming expenditure. However I don't buy many games at all tbh and never really have.

Yeh I agree with that about Harry Potter - lots of feels in the last one for sure

@Baabcat Take it you're in front of the telly Bob...got a score prediction?

I got around to picking it up, it's dirt cheap, will have a go with bots this weekend to get a feel of it. I'll look out for, and I almost said Rib lol, @The3rdWalker and anyone else who picks it up, as i hear its impossible solo...

We face Wigan on Monday and that's also on ITV, i expect us to lose as well but then i expect us to lose whether we're on tv or not haha

I'd tend to wait for games to go on sale, unless they were new releases that everyone's playing. I haven't gamed much this year, so have only brought a handful of games and they were all on sale. The one thing i did do though was look at the PS games catalogue and upgraded my subscription to be able to play them, there were 5 games on there that i want to play and buying them all together would have cost over £100 where as getting the upgraded subscription was no where near that price. I definitely recommend looking through the catalogue and checking out the games if you haven't already. In previous years I've probably spent a fair bit on games each year but all it takes is pre-ordering COD and buying another game and you've already spent close to £100. The thing that'll probably set me back this year is upgrading my PC but that'll be for a mixture of work and games.

I love GTA single player, I don't mind how big the map is, not something I've ever thought about. But yeah agree online is for FG race nights 🤗

Pulp Fiction! How could i forget that film? It definitely makes it into my top 10 but not sure if it quite makes top 3. Grand Budapest Hotel was a brilliant film, i love that style of film. It reminds me of Only Murderers in the Building. A top 3 of each genre would be good, action, romance, animation, Xmas films. Then i can put Die Hard as number one Xmas film and have an extra spot in action films haha

I think my list always changes depending on my mood, but first that come to mind would be: 1: Pulp Fiction 2: Interstellar 3: Grand Budapest Hotel I could probs make a top 100 and still be sad to miss films out

Condensing it down to just 3 films is difficult and there are some great ones above. For me I have gone with - Top Gun Maverick, I think this just pips the original for me as it just hits all the right feels Ready player one - This is just a personal favourite of mine, I really loved the recent release of this. And I am doing it, Star Wars the empire strikes back! I love the Star Wars Universe and have played most of the games etc. I think for me it was the world building that really does it for me for the series. I am not sure how you can compare Star Wars with Gladiator if i'm being honest... Yes the characters could have been better in Star Wars and the story has probably been done before if you look back far enough but they are two entirely different films, set in entirely different locations, one being of fiction and one having history to utilise, one filmed 20 years after the other... Some of the creativity that went into those films, they probably pushed film making forwards faster than any other film (maybe with the exception of Avatar and it's use of CGI?), dykstraflex (one of the earliest forms of computer controlled camera's) was used on it, the films somewhat started off CGI as we know it with it's 3d Wireframe animation in fact even Return of the Jedi brought in THX which is one of the assurances for audio in cinema and we won't forget about the prelude to greenscreen (blue). Gladiator is an immense film in it's own right but it's just a different kettle of fish in my eye's. A film is not just about the characters, it is about the audio, the visuals, the experience, it's why I love cinema (admittedly I don't get to go so often these days) but as much tech as you put in your own home it is difficult to recreate a cinema experience. Empire Strikes back made almost 25 times it's original budget back (22 million budget and brought in 549 million, compared to Gladiator which had a budget of 103 million and brought in 5 times at 503 million) so even from a success point of view the original Star Wars film was far more successful. Admittedly recent films and tv series have been somewhat hit and miss. Some honorable mentions from me as well - Braveheart Avatar Master & commander The patriot

This was harder than I thought I was so close to putting these in Trainspotting Twin town This is england

Surely favourite doesn't necessarily mean best? I think just down to the amount of times I've watched them they should go down as some of my favourites.