well... all the sales are like this
1) some games dont repeat in every sale (a few)
2) some games repeat in every sale
3) NEW games come on sale for the 1st time, or for the 1st time with a good discount
but as you have more and more games you become interested only in 3)... and maybe in some of the games in 1) if you didnt get them before...
It depends on what is in the 3) category

and there have been a lot of games coming out just a couple weeks before the sale so there havent been deep discounts on those ones...
Far Cry 3, AC3, XCOM, Dishonored and Hitman have been at 50% which is reasonable.
What i do think is that this xmas the real sales have been elsewhere... amazon, greenmangaming, gamersgate...
I picked up Darksiders franchise from amazon (yeah, steam a couple days later made the same deal, but i wonder if that was because of the amazon one. And on the 25 i could have gotten it even cheaper with that +$5 THQ promo), i picked up the super bethesda gamersgate sale and sleeping dogs in greenmangaming at 12usd (+ $6 GMG credits)