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From the customers' point of view pre-ordering makes sense for popular retail items (or tickets) with limited quantity. That way, you can make sure you get your copy on release day before it's sold out. And the retailers get an idea how many copies they should stock in order to meet the demand. Needless to say, none of this is relevant for digital items. They just adopted the practice in a context where it doesn't really make sense.
Post edited February 21, 2015 by Leroux
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lazydog: Personally , I cannot believe the practice ever took off. It never ceases to amaze me.
The same spirit that makes also many GOGers demand complete editions makes users buy games with pre-order exclusives. It's not surprising that pre-order exclusives work. I've also pre-ordered two or three games because of such exclusives but admittedly all games I pre-ordered for exclusives were ones I was genuinely interested in to begin with and where I had no reason to expect a bad or broken game (such as Left 4 Dead 2 and Hitman: Absolution - games I *might* have pre-ordered just to have them on Day 1 but the exclusives were the final push to do so despite the high price). But it actually is a disturbing practice. When the exclusives are crap all people getting them are idiots, when they are awesome it means that the developers/publisher butchered their own games. It just can't be done "properly".
Post edited February 21, 2015 by F4LL0UT
I frown on the practice of pre-order bonuses and also frown even higher on selling unfinished games to people to ultimately become your beta testers for a game that may end up sucking or even not being released at all. Look at Godus for example, that is a nightmare of epic proportions and I feel sorry for all the people who got sucked into supporting their kickstarter or threw any money into it any other way either.

I've been a video gamer now for 32 years and during all of that time I have never, not even once - bought a video game on pre-order before it was finished and released. Normally I don't even buy them the day they come out or even the week they come out even if I am highly excited about them. In recent years I have been slightly tempted to do this 3 times now as a way to tip my hat to the developers and thank them for making the game I was interested in, but I ended up getting one as a gift from someone, another I ended up deciding to wait for it to show up on GOG, and the third is The Witcher 3 which I originally planned to buy in the weeks leading up to the official release, which would have been right now by the original release date. While still very enthusiastic about that game though, I wont be upgrading my video card for probably 2 years or more unless it lets out a puff of smoke, and I have a Radeon 7850 which is under the minimum system requirements, plus I have a 30" monitor with 2560x1600 resolution which is double the number of pixels over HD, meaning twice the burden on the video card, so I'm not optimistic TW3 will run on my system at all worth playing until I get new video hardware which ain't going to happen for some time - and I don't feel like buying a game up front right now that I might not play for 1-2 years due to hardware limitations (otherwise the rest of my entire system meets the recommended requirements).

So I'm not a fan of pre-ordering at all pretty much, and while a situation could arise that I'd make an exception - like TW3, unforseen events like not meeting minimum system requirements can pour liquid nitrogen onto my plans.

Then there's the fact that lots of games get all hyped up and then often under-deliver in extreme proportions, like what I understand about Godus for example, and then people who bought Early Access or other form of pre-order find out how terrible the game is after it comes out and can't get a refund - while I can just wait and see how terrible people think it is and just not buy it, or wait for it to show up on Bundlestars with 10 other games for $3. Deal! Now, there's zero chance that's true for TW3 of course, I'm totally sold on that game being awesome, but it wont be awesome for me unless one of the pre-order bonuses you get with it is a brand new current generation $300 video card. ;)

Short version: Pre-order? -> Pfffffffttt!
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SummonerYuna: Can you explain the difference? I always thought that if it is advertised as a bonus it's exclusive to pre-ordering because there isn't another way to get it and people who buy the game on release date or after don't have access to that content.
Right, as Maighstir said, there are two scenarios:

A. Preorder ___ game, and get stuff as an exclusive extra! If you don't preorder, you can never get that extra.

Examples:

Etrian Odyssey III (Nintendo DS) - Came with physical artbook
A Golden Wake/b] - Came with a soundtrack (but not on GOG, as it was never even preorder-able)

B. Preorder ___ game, and get stuff as an extra! If you don't preorder, you will have to pay extra money to acquire that extra.

Examples:

Vanishing of Ethan Carter - Soundtrack, Making of, other extras were given free to preorders. But post-orders have the option on GOG to buy for $9.99


From what I gather, most of GOG is okay with scenario B, but not with scenario A. (As part of the unpopular opinion, I'm personally okay with both, as I believe the early adopter market should be compensated.)
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SummonerYuna: If a person is not able to pay BEFORE the game is released then they might miss on some content or advantages (like powerful in-game items, etc.).
I'll just point out that if you are playing the game on a PC, then it doesn't matter if you preorder or not. If you want the preorder bonus content, you will have it. Barring, you know, the *really* odd cases like where the dev writes special code for a very small group of people (like single digits) and delivers it to them directly. Maybe not then.

Don't have the preorder stuff for that game you just bought? I bet if you know how to Google, you can get it.