Quote:
Originally Posted by
tomfoolery_79 
Scott, are you really still pre-ordering games? Who does that? Pre-ordering is for the benefit of the publishers not yours.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mf5Uj4XIT1Y
Watch this.
Few reasons not to pre-order games:
1) They earn interest on your money during the wait period, not you.
2) You have no idea how good it will be or if it will be riddled with bugs.
3) Tricking you with special skins, loot, mounts, bags, etc is a gimmick meant to separate you from your money.
4) They know once the game launches you cannot get a refund "if you don't like it"
5) Aliens: Colonial Marines
Basically, a pre-order is almost a guaranteed sale, otherwise if someone waits till launch and gets the
accurate info they could lose a sale. What do you think they will try to get you to do.
With the exception of digital sales, a pre-order in almost every case is a $5 deposit, so they're making pennies on these pre-orders. In the case of games on Steam or other digital distribution, sure. I still pre-order for one reason, if I know it's a game I want to play on day one. And the usual chance to have it downloaded and ready early so I can play ASAP and not sit through a download. I wanted to play Colonial Marines co-op on day one, so I preordered. Did I have fun with it? sure, it was quite fun on 4 player coop on the hardest difficulty, sure it only took 5 hours to beat, but I still had fun. Now, clearly not the cheapest way to get fun out of something, but I don't regret buying it.
I want to play Crysis 3, but not day one, so I didn't bother pre-ordering. In fact I'm going to wait until the "Maximum Edition" or w/e they want to call this one, is on Steam for like $30 or less. I really do want to play Bioshock Infinite as I really enjoyed Bioshock, and to a lesser extent, Bio2, so I will pre-order it at some point.
Do I really care that some company is making interest off my $50? No, not really, it's how banking works, I don't use a bank, but it's not like I'd be making a ton of interest off that $50 if it sat in the bank for an extra week (I generally don't pre-order until 1 to 2 weeks before release). The extra content that comes with pre-orders does usually get released later for a cost, where as a pre-order get's it technically free, but unless its a series I really love, I generally don't care too much about bonuses.
As for the getting a refund... who cares, honestly. there isn't much you can get a refund on in the entertainment world because you 'simply didn't like it' It's not like you could get a refund if you bought it AFTER launch either so I'm not sure I understand your point on that one. Hell, you can't normally get a refund on a game PERIOD, physical or not if it's been opened, and since you'd have to open it to know if you like it (unless you get led around by what other people say) your point on that is completely moot and irrelevant.
As for the 'accurate info' part, that is nearly 100% subjective. the ONLY info you can get that is objective about a game is whether it has bugs, and if they are gamebreaking, every single other piece of info in a review is 100% subjective and does NOT mean the same things to everyone. I happen to like a lot of games that reviewers hate, and I absolutely hate a bunch of games that reviewers claim are the best things ever.
