I just wanted to expand on a tweet I made yesterday just a little way below this post and ‘big up’ the Steam Holiday Sale (and slightly smaller but still quite large ‘big up’ Apple’s 12 Days of Christmas promo). I came to Steam a little late in the game, to be honest. I didn’t realise that there was this great little service sat quietly in the corner, offering great bargains on a fairly regular basis. Up until lately, it was merely “where my Team Fortress 2 lives” and “that thing that usually needs updating every time I boot it” (which admittedly, wasn’t that often). I knew you could buy games from it – I just didn’t know they were quite regularly cheap games! Being a tight-fisted miser at heart, Steam is now my best friend and with all the bargains this new Holiday Sale brings, it should definitely be yours too.

Like I mentioned, you could call me a bit of a Steam newbie so I wasn’t aware of last year’s blow-out sale when it was actually occurring. Only later did I hear the wonderful tales of the rampant discounts – 50%, 66%, 75% and even 90% off a huge library of titles. I made a point of keeping an eye out for it this year though. But Steam has been good to me all year round, too. They often have a sale-ette running, discounting titles both for the weekend and during the mid-week. Pretty much everything I’ve been playing this year has been from those Steam offers and has saved me a fortune compared to the prices I’d be paying from brick-and-mortar alternatives (and even online stores).

There are pros and cons. The big pro one for me is, of course, the savings. When I can buy a stack of titles for the same price as one store bought game, I’m a happy chappy. That said, it’s weird and a little unsatisfying not to have a boxed copy in your hands with all the unpacking and that new-manual-smell. Sure, no-one ever reads it and it’s usually just chucked back in the box which itself is filling your home with more clutter but it’s there all the same. Waiting for your game to arrive in the post is swapped for downloading it, and Steam keeps it up-to-date with all the latest patches should they appear. And, oh yes, the CD/DVDs. The only reason why you ever see those game boxes again – the need to constantly hunt down a game disc because it won’t run without it being in your machine. So happy to not have that arse-ache to worry about.

But getting back to the Holiday Sale – between the 20th Dec (yes, I’m late with this) and the 2nd Jan, Steam are offering huge discounts across a whole range of titles, changing the primary offers daily and selling bundles at a fraction of what you’d pay for them otherwise. Every genre is catered for and there’s even a special section for the flavour-of-the-month sub-section – Indie Games, where you can pick up bundles of bite-sized fun for next to nothing. So take a look, you’re almost guaranteed to find a game you’ve overlooked, now with a price to tempt.

Apple’s 12 Days of Christmas is a somewhat different beast. Firstly, it’s for their iWhatever hardware and secondly, it’s free. For a 12 day period (26th Dec – 6th Jan), Apple give away a bunch of iTunes ‘stuff’ (music, videos, movies, TV shows, apps) you can download for absolutely nothing. All you need to do is pop along to the appstore and download the free 12 Days of Christmas app. If that doesn’t appeal, you can even just sign up for email alerts. You’re not guaranteed find everything offered quite to your tastes but hopefully there’s at least one gem in the rough to make it worth it. And it’s free so stop whining

Here’s a run down of what they offered last year just so you can get some perspective.

• Day 1 – Music: Snow Patrol ‘An Olive Grove Facing The Sea (2009 Version).
• Day 2 – TV Show: Alan Partridge ‘Knowing Me, Knowing Yule’.
• Day 3 – Game: ‘Trivial Pursuit’.
• Day 4 – Video: JLS ‘Everybody In Love’.
• Day 5 – Video: Robbie Williams ‘Morning Sun’.
• Day 6 – Film: ‘Lesbian Vampire Killers’.
• Day 7 – TV Show: ‘Outnumbered’.
• Day 8 – Game: ‘Labyrinth’.
• Day 9 – Video: Leona Lewis ‘Happy’.
• Day 10 – Film: ‘Peter and the Wolf’.
• Day 11 – Game: ‘Let’s Golf!’.
• Day 12 – Video: Foo Fighters ‘Wheels’.

So if you see anything up there that appeals, maybe it’s worth checking out this year’s promotion for similar ‘goodies’.