Office like software, tools for developers, graphics / photo editing etc.
Personally I don't play that many games, touching a new one every couple month, and usually only get them when they're on sale on steam or gog, never paying more than about 25€, usually getting older titles for maybe 10. So that might still make it more money per year than for software, but the individual purchase isn't that much and thus easier done.
I don't know if you're counting apps here too, but I collected a couple over the years that were only 1 to maybe 5 bucks, again since this isn't a huge amount of money the decision is easily made.
As for professional software, I don't do photo editing often and professionally enough to justify anything more than gimp, for example. Same would go for video. I write maybe two or three letters a year, so libre office is more than enough.
Office, work productivity software is $600 - $2500 with the promise of more work that we have to do.
Same reason we'll pay a few K on a vacation but demand our employer pay for flight and hotel for an office visit.
On the other side I paid for a dozen games for PS2.
So yes, I'm about ten times more likely to buy games than other kind of software. But all the other kind of software I need is available for free, so I'm not sure that we can compare the two things.
Most games I will happily wait until they’re on sale too.