I just stumbled across the Amazon pre-order page for Dishonored 2... due out December 31st, 2016. Aside from crowd funding... isn't this a bit early?

I'm all over pre-ordering Dishonored 2. The first was amazing... but I have no idea where my life will be in 18 months. Chances are high I'll even be at a different address. My credit card will likely be a different number by then when they can charge it... so many variables. Take away the personal preferences and opinions about pre-order in general... isn't this a bad idea from simple logistics?

http://www.amazon.com/Dishonored-II-PlayStation-4/dp/B00ZM5OXD8/ref=sr_1_1?s=videogames&ie=UTF8&qid=1434992555&sr=1-1&keywords=dishonored+2

Are you sure they don't charge your credit card immediately? Be as it may, it's an awfully long time before the game is done, and it may get delayed too. Silly, considering that most preorder discounts are valid almost up until release day. By then there are lots of trailers, teasers and gameplay videos floating about.

They don't straight away. You might get lucky and have the price dropped. Or better yet, in 6 months they might add to the price leaving you with the cheapest price. There are advantaged to pre-ordering early.

You can change your details whenever you want.

Amazon doesn't charge until the item ships. So I'm sure on that. They also charge you the best price after you placed your order. So even if the price drops, you didn't lose anything. So you are safe on those 2 issues. But on the rest... I'm still thinking its a crazy expectation from the publisher.

Also, for games that get vague announcements (especially around E3 time) they will put it up with a release date of the end of the year so that when they modify it to the actual release date it'll be "Guess what, we'll get you the item sooner!" instead of "We actually won't get it when we originally thought we did".

Well you can also pre-order Mirror's Edge Catalyst, release date > December 31, 2016

Purchased
Chasm 10th May 2013
Grim Dawn 3rd June 2013

And other kickstarter / Early access / Greenlight games that haven't yet made it to release - Soundself / 7 days to die / The Dead Linger etc etc

Yo'd have thought I'd have learned by now...

yeah, I am a Grim Dawn backer and know well the time tables on crowd funding. This is the first retail release from a publisher that I have personally seen that was this far off. The kickstarters usually have a release date that is well under-planned for and gets pushed back over and over again.

Amazon usually starts taking pre-orders as soon as a game is announced, sometimes before. Part of the campaign to get Xenoblade localised focused on people pre-ordering the game on Amazon - before a localisation had even been announced.

I remember amazon taking pre-orders on Starcraft 2, back in 2006. Game released in July 2010.

I will never wrap my head around the pre-order culture. It's like all the "shut up and take my money" memes come to life.

Stop buying unfinished, untested products. Why is this so hard? How many games need to completely and utterly fail at launch for people to finally learn? We get al those bugged, broken, poorly made, rushed games because they no longer need to be any good to succeed- you've already bought them anyway. It's not like they are going to run out of copies. Is some pre-order bonus DLC worth it, if the whole games turns out to be crap? Why would you not wait for release to see if the gameis any good at all? I get it- some games you just have to see for yourself, because you love the franchise or the creators or something, but that does not mean you have to have it day 1 in unplayable condition for full price, if waiting a few months would have got you a patched game for half price AND maybe taught the developer and/or publisher a lesson.

I'm sorry if I sound harsh, but the reality is that you are breaking gaming for all of us with your willingness to pay for unfinished games based on hype and name alone.

Pre-ordering only weakens customer bargaining power, which ultimately works against better games and better business practices.

(I'm not lumping early access in here, which has its own entire set of tradeoffs which the buyer can knowingly make.)

these days i never buy a game before it's asking/sale price goes below $20. most often i'll wait until they release a goty/gold/complete edition a year or two after the original release... my ASP (or rather abp (average buying price)) over the last 3 years is $3.5 :-)

I know I pre-ordered some game at least two years before launch, but I can't remember which one.