/Rant - Preorders

These days every shop that sells games will have displays and advertisements up telling you to 'PREORDER NOW!'. So, why are we encouraged to pre-order, what's in it for us and what problems does the process create?



In case anyone doesn't know, pre-ordering is when you put a deposit down for a yet to be released game so that you'll have your copy secured when the game DOES come out. As of recently though, almost every major title released also has pre-order incentives which are extras offered to people who pre-order. Sometimes it's extra DLC, sometimes it's access to a demo or beta and sometimes its something else (Alan Wake came with a keyring torch). The use of this on the retail side of things is of course to encourage people to buy their games at release, but pre-orders also let larger companies judge the popularity of a game before it's release and help them know how many copies to order. For the buyer it means you get something extra that you wouldn't normally... Seems simple enough, but naturally nothing ever works perfectly, so allow me to mention (my favourite part of the rant) what i think are problems with the pre-order system. Firstly, DLC release. So this week i picked up Naughty Bear and got a code for two extra costumes, however when i went to enter the code into the Xbox LIVE Marketplace, it wouldn't work. See because Australia is ahead of Europe (in terms of time zone) the DLC had yet to be added to the marketplace and wouldn't be accessible until the game's release in Europe. Quite a few games do this and it causes issues not just for gamers in smaller market regions, but for the game's publisher too. When this happens, often online forum's get flooded with complaints and people attempt to contact the games publisher to get a new code, but the pre-order codes are often a product of the actual retailer you purchased the game from and not the publisher. Speaking of retailers, my other issue with pre-order incentives is store exclusive items. Mass Effect 2 had two separate sets of armour for people who pre-ordered, but one was available from one store while the second was from a different store. This is annoying because people (namely me) can prefer to have all the content available for a game, and so you end up with people trading codes online (which i'm sure i don't have to point out is a horrible idea). My final issue with pre-order incentives is that they are so often just a code for DLC. While i love my Xbox LIVE account, i know there are still many people who DON'T have Xbox live, so it really doesn't help them at all. So i guess, in closing, pre-ordering is a good idea that helps minimise loss and excess stock for stores, but all to often becomes an issue for gamers and could be implemented better, as opposed to being handed out by occasionally forgetful staff, or being codes that many people can't even use.