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Is it worth pre-ordering games today?

 

 

This year, 2014 has been a year full of marketing stunts and plenty of disappointments.  From overrated games to broken play flow, some of the reckoned blockbuster games, fell short to expectations.

 

Let?s take for example Watch Dogs. Brutal hype created for that game: a full open world with hacking skills.  We then get a repetitive gameplay with little in-depth.

 

Then Destiny. The game was good, but not something worth 500 million.

 

AC Unity, full of bugs who crippled PCs, Xbones, PS4s due to bad optimization.

 

Even Halo The Master Chief Collection happened to arrive with huge bugs in the Matchmaking.

 

Yes. Games become more complex, and bugs are bound to appear. But there?s a difference between rushing a game and finishing it.

 

So, is it worth pre-ordering games anymore?

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Not when you know you're gonna be able to get a digital copy whenever you want, without fear of there not being enough copies. Even without that, it seems like they get better stock for games when they launch now.  Then again, I haven't been to a midnight release in a long while.

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Not when you know you're gonna be able to get a digital copy whenever you want, without fear of there not being enough copies. Even without that, it seems like they get better stock for games when they launch now.  Then again, I haven't been to a midnight release in a long while.

 

Any benefits to ordering digital copies?

 

Also, the day COD: AW came out, I went to GameStop and bought it. I don't think there is a point to pre-order anymore.

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Any benefits to ordering digital copies?

 

Also, the day COD: AW came out, I went to GameStop and bought it. I don't think there is a point to pre-order anymore.

Depends on what you see as a benefit, I guess.  To me a benefit is, a lot of the time you can preinstall the game so that is ready when it's released.  No leaving the house and waiting in line....just fire it up.  Also, I kind of like having no disc for it.  I don't have to worry about damaging it or switching it in and out.

 

However, There are some downsides too, of course.  You obviously can't trade the game in or give it to a friend to try.

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Pre-Order revenues also encourages game-devs to run away with the money without even bothering to really finishing the buggy games.

They already got the money, the expense to completes the games would detrimental toward just recently obtained profit, why bother?

 

so NO.

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It's more about believing pre-launch hype or not. It's easy to build unrealistic expectations for a game no one has played yet. It's only worth it IMO if for some reason you happent to know very well what you're paying for and you're encouraging the developer by doing so. For instance I pre-ordered IWD:EE and backed both Pillars of Eternity and Tides of Numenera for the price of a full game at launch, because I was quite confident that these would be good games and wanted to encourage the development of this type of entertainment. Of course in the last two cases they were kickstarters so that's another story.

But I certainly wouldn't pre-order any AAA title these days. Wait for the bugs to be ironed out, the critics to reach consensus and the price to fall. Patience pays off.

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I only preorder digital games on the Xbox One so I can download them before release but beyond that I really don't see the point of it. I have not pre-ordered a physical game since 2012.

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I'm questioning this myself.

I got lucky once when I preordered and fully paid up the order just to find that Ubisoft pulled a shifty and severely limited the copies released to the Aus market.

Since I had paid up, I got a copy...

 

Thesedays there's no real incentive to preorder... :/

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Origin tends to give me extra DLC for preordering for some games.  So there's that.  Plus, I can preload the game if I preorder, so I have it ready to play when it comes out instead of waiting for the install.

 

Ubisoft?  Perhaps not, they've had loads of issues transitioning to the current gen.

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I only preorder because i've gone all digital and but have crappy internet, so it gives it time to show and be playable on release day.

Apart from those games i want to play ion release day, no i don't really see the point in pre-ordering for any other reason.

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I'd love preordering on EA Access and getting to play the game early and keep going at launch were it not for my gaming group on PC :/

 

Hope EA is cooking up a plan to let you buy once play anywhere with this, but we shall see.

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What problem? ?\_(?)_/?

 

People get fooled around to pre-order games all the time with some things that would not make any difference if they are available to all players. Publishers get their coins, and place post launch day review embargo in order to block critics that get early access to games to talk about the games and expose how bad they are. Thus publishers end up getting a good chunk of coins regardless of the status of their games.

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I hate when preordering is required to get access to extra stuff that you can't get separately. Love when they give discounts or extra stuff (see all those games having reward levels on Steam with free games, soundtracks and other cool stuff), it makes up for the fact that the digital game costing as much as the physical copy is absolutely ridiculous.

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I'm always pre-ordering... usually from 3rd party key sellers (legit ones) - however, what DOES ###### me off more is 'review embargos' - where sites are not allowed to publish reviews for games before release date. This should be illegal. People have the right to know if a game is good before it's release...

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If I want a game on release day I don't have an issue with pre-ordering but only if reviews have been released. I don't like this culture of holding back reviews until after the game has been released. 

 

One advantage of living in the UK is that review embargoes usually account for US release dates so if I pre-order I have a few days to cancel the order.

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Another thing I don't like.... different stores have different pre-order 'perks' to encourage sales through their channel. This should not be allowed. If there are pre-order perks, they should be for ALL channels.

I can't remember the example off the top of my head, but one was if you buy from say Gamestop, you got a REALLY good in game perk (something like a unique level) - which wasn't available elsewhere or a DLC.

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Another thing I don't like.... different stores have different pre-order 'perks' to encourage sales through their channel. This should not be allowed. If there are pre-order perks, they should be for ALL channels.

I can't remember the example off the top of my head, but one was if you buy from say Gamestop, you got a REALLY good in game perk (something like a unique level) - which wasn't available elsewhere or a DLC.

 

See what they then do there is they offer the other DLC (extra levels etc) at a price. 

 

Let's be honest though, unless people stop pre-ordering for these extra perks it's always going to be a thing. 

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