Perhaps you just don't look forward to new games anymore?

I personally play new games I want on release day and excitedly, thankyouverymuch. I'm on Mass Effect 3 as we speak, actually, a month ago was on Kingdoms of Amalur and can see myself playing Diablo 3 as soon as it releases and looking forward to it.

How about the number of games has significantly increased and releases are a common day occurrence now compared to your childhood? Maybe you already have more than enough games to play, or you're not a fan of modern trends, or you've seen it all before, or low sale prices have spoilt you? Countless possibilities, could be anything. ;)

I'm the same as you really. The only game I'm actually looking forward to is Guild Wars 2, and that's because it actually tries to do something new with the MMO genre. So I guess the biggest reason I don't look forward to new games anymore is because they're all the same, I've seen it all before and it's not very exciting to see the same thing again.

I remember when I mowed lawns for 3 weeks straight so I could buy a Gamecube. But when the 3DS and Wii were announced I just blew their releases off and tried to find a way to buy older games xD

I've never ever cared about new releases. I didn't even know that Mass Effect 3 was out until I saw that RPS had posted a review of it.

There are very few games that I'd buy brand new, and even fewer that I'd be willing to preorder (STALKER 2 is the only one that comes to mind). There just aren't many experiences that mainstream gaming can offer that I can't wait to experience. Besides which, my darn computer won't run anything newer than 2004 anyway :P

When I was a kid there was no real way for me to care about release dates, as I had no way of knowing about them. The local magazine would sometimes tell us about interesting upcoming games but it was rare to find an exact release date, so what I did was to just use magazine reviews as my way of knowing when a game had been released. I also had very little money (poor family), so usually when I got a game, I got a used game.

These days games are cheaper, I have more money and I can easily find out about release dates. Still, for the most part I don't buy games on release (Skyrim being one of my exceptions, and I found that game well worth the price I payed)

I usually get really excited/follow when a game is going to be released if it is released at a time when I have the free time to actually play it when it comes out.

For instance, last year when the Witcher 2 came out it was basically right after university ended and so I had a lot of free time to spend playing it. But when Skyrim was announced for 11/11/11 I didn't really care that much because I knew that was going to be right in the middle of my midterms at uni and so held off until Christmas to get it (and then played it like crazy during my break). And for ME3 I was excited, but I actually have a ton of school work this entire month and so even though I bought ME3 already and will be getting it soon I won't have time to play it until April.

The wealth of info and ease of access to stuff these days is probably a part of it. Getting a cartridge that might've been in low stock 10 years ago right away certainly adds to the pressure and hype over just being able to buy what you want digitally . Especially since, back then, the release dates might've been hard to find, and if you did miss something, a lot of times you were screwed. Now the average game, if it somehow sells out around you, you have dozens of alternatives to obtain it. Even the rarest things these days tend to show up at a used game store or on Ebay.

We didn't used to have Amazon.com and the virtual guarantee of any modern release being available pretty much indefinitely (seriously, find a game released after 2006 that you just CANNOT buy anymore). You can get a game whenever so it becomes less important. Also, the cultural activity you may be sharing with your social groups may not be as centered around gaming, or at least not the latest gaming. This significantly reduced the value proposition of shelling out the extra cash on release day.

also it is hard to get excited about beta testing games given the state many of them are released in these days

I kinda feel the same way, but for me, I think it's because gaming has become just another part of our culture. Too much of anything is not good, though I know some people will disagree with that.

Anything that makes money gets pushed whenever and wherever they can push it, and that kinda takes away some of what is special about it.

I think it's also partly because so many "big name" games these days are nothing but rehashes of the same old stuff, and they milk it until it runs dry.

And things get watered down. Facebook "games"? Yuck. Stupid little time-wasters to play on my phone? Yuck. There's just too much crap.

Probably for the fact that I don't need to buy another new game on day one because I still have at least 100 games on my backlog. Besides, it'll go on sale and possibly a GOTY/Gold Edition eventually so why fork out my hard-earned money now?

I hope I'm not contributing to the possible decline of commercial PC games with my miserly ways.

new game = still beta or alpha state,highest price,thick coated with hype and graphics
old game = well developed,low price,outdated graphics but show true colours

If you like hype and dance with mass new games suit.if you don't new game have no merit.

When I was a kid, there was no such thing as "release dates" for computer games. At least we didn't hear about them, there was no marketing, no press whatsoever. You just went into an electronics store (or mall, or some obscure little shop that had decided to sell some games next to its usual stuff) and got surprised by new games on the shelves.

Even the computer gaming magazines didn't exist yet, the first one came around in 1990 (I think). There were two or three general computer magazines which usually contained some pages about games, but not much, and usually they were simply reviewing games that were already on the shelves. The Internet didn't exist yet.

Fun times. ;)

That said, I very rarely care about release dates. There's just a lot of hype and ballyhoo around these dates, and then a buggy and unfinished version is released to hundreds of thousands of people who can't wait to pay a ton of money for it. The powers of marketing ...