It is finally that time of the year again. The Steam Winter Sale 2015 is coming (to town)! And oh yeah, something with Christmas and New Year.
Several sites report that the new Steam Winter Sale is running from the 22nd of December till the 4th of January. Which hopefully will give everyone enough time to find some extra funds to use on this sale. Because some of the discounts are actually amazing!

Be warned there have been rumours that there will be some changes to the old Winter Sale format this year. We already saw some adjustments in the Autumn Sale a few weeks ago. But what will this mean for the Steam Winter Sale 2015?

Until last summer there were three parts to each Steam Sale. Which basically meant that there were three chances at getting discounts

• The Regular Sale, these are the games that were discounted for the entire sale period. So there was no real hurry to get them.
• The Daily Deals, these games were only on sale for 24 hours, if you missed out they were either full price again or on sale with a lower discount (for example 20% instead of 60%). At the end of the sale period there was a five hour period called the “Encore Sale” where a few of the most popular of these deals were available again.
• The Flash Sales, every 8 hours there will be a small round of sales featuring four games. Prior to each round there is an option to vote for one game out of a selection of four games and the title with the most votes would be available in the next Flash Sale round. These were a bit more fast paced and if you missed out on a round there was a good chance you missed out on a good deal.

It seems that Steam has done away with the different kind of sales. It was during the Autumn sale that we no longer had the Daily Deals and Flash Sales but only the regular sale remained. Which made it easier to make a list of what you really wanted to have and plan your buy according to your budget instead of waiting and wondering if something would get cheaper in a Daily Deal or Flash Sale.

This is what Valve had to say about it;
“We’ll still be highlighting your top games on the front page for 24-48 hour spans, but those products will stay at their most competitive discount, before and after being featured.
“It’s not a major change, but it does make the sale a lot more valuable for customers, and it allows us to build sale features that recommend your product all sale long, instead of just during its front page feature.”

Like many gamers I hope  a “few” games  will be popping up in the Steam sale like The Talos Principle, Prison Architect, Borderlands the Pre-Sequel and Star Wars – Knights of the Old Republic. And I know that many of my friends hope there will be at least a small discount on Fallout 4 this sale. And last but not least, hoping for a Warframe deal on the DLC since I can never have enough stuff to use in that game. On the other hand I think I hear the wallet with my gaming funds crying already.
If you miss out on the sales you shouldn’t fear too much. There are always ongoing sales and if you place a game on your Steam wishlist, you will be notified when the title goes on sale again.

So have fun with the Steam Winter Sale 2015! What are you hoping to get?