1. #1

    Destiny and Pre-orders in gaming industry

    Hi all,

    I went to a Gamestop this Monday and saw a stand with a mysterious game called Destiny that I have never heard about. It was available for pre-order. I was surprised that the game is already ready for a pre-order whilst I have never even heard about it. I went on with my life and later in the week discovered that this was a new game developed by Bungie and that they have just announced it.

    That buffles me, I remember few years ago pre-orders were nonexistent or exclusive for a well known franchise with a dedicated fan-base. Over the years pre-orders became more popular with publishers, and I can see why. But I have never seen something so crazy as the above mentioned pre-order deal. They want you to pre-rder (buy) a game that we know nothing about, have seen no gameplay or game mechanics. All we know is that it is an fps and that it is made by the guys who brought you halo series..

    Is it enough for you to pre-order a game?

  2. #2
    Pit Lord philefluxx's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by DumbestWhale View Post
    Hi all,

    I went to a Gamestop this Monday and saw a stand with a mysterious game called Destiny that I have never heard about. It was available for pre-order. I was surprised that the game is already ready for a pre-order whilst I have never even heard about it. I went on with my life and later in the week discovered that this was a new game developed by Bungie and that they have just announced it.

    That buffles me, I remember few years ago pre-orders were nonexistent or exclusive for a well known franchise with a dedicated fan-base. Over the years pre-orders became more popular with publishers, and I can see why. But I have never seen something so crazy as the above mentioned pre-order deal. They want you to pre-rder (buy) a game that we know nothing about, have seen no gameplay or game mechanics. All we know is that it is an fps and that it is made by the guys who brought you halo series..

    Is it enough for you to pre-order a game?
    Thats sort of how things happened with Rift. No one really knew much about it until like a month or so before launch and a lot of what we saw was the "Your not in Azeroth anymore" slogans. So it definitely happens, even with titles that become pretty big. Once the open beta launched I pre-ordered the game after about an hour or so. But that was a different time and even console titles have started to release underwhelming and extremely buggy games. Id say I trust preorders less across the board now at days, seems that even with the more hype your more likely to get a crap game...*cough *cough Diablo 3.....
    Last edited by philefluxx; 2013-02-20 at 04:01 PM.

  3. #3
    Pretty sure Gamestop at least has been doing preorders for everything from yesterday's releases to speculated potential games that might come out in 2023 for as long as I can remember.
    ~ flarecde
    Reality is nothing; Perception is everything.

  4. #4
    Seeing as Blizzard-Activision released Diablo 3, pretty sure we'll see a repeat with Bungie-Activision.
    http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...cn=Revolutions


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  5. #5
    Sadly, the average gaming consumer is woefully undereducated about the medium and the products they purchase, and prone is to buying into hype. That's why pre-orders work so well. Publishers and retailers have noticed this, and are doing everything they can to exploit this, including pre-orders for a game like Destiny, where you're buying the game off of the developers name alone (since we know fuckall about the game).

    A lot of this comes from retailers though. Publishers are happy to allow it, but the retailer is the one that take your pre-orders.

    Personally, I only pre-order games on rare occasions, and I've yet to be disappointed/burned with any game I've pre-ordered (or purchased) in the past 3-5 years. That's primarily because I spend quite a bit of time looking into games with higher price tags to make sure it's the game I'm looking for/know what to expect, and only purchase the more "mediocre" games when they're on deep sale.

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by DumbestWhale View Post
    Is it enough for you to pre-order a game?
    Never. Unless I've logged at least 10-20 hours in a beta I don't pre-order.

    Whenever I see a game no one knows anything about saying "HAI PREORDAR NOW" I see a catfish humanoid screaming "IT'S A TRAP"

    IE: Makeb expansion in swtor.
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  7. #7
    Gamestop pretty much has preorders for every single game no matter if it has a release date or what information is released. They usually charge an extra amount ($5 I believe) for those preorders. They just want your money.

  8. #8
    Lets see i pre-ordered D3 (Annual Pass), I pre purchased GW2 cuz i liked how it looked. I pre-ordered Dragon Age 2 i think because i loved dragon age one so why not purchase the sequel. And i think thats the extent of my pre-ordering of games. The reason i dont pre-order games is because 'whats the point'. Unless its going to be hard to get in your region or area why do you need to put money down on it early? And yea i can understand ppl being in the situation where they have to pay early to make sure they get a copy but im not in that situation so ill wait till the day it comes out and go to the store and buy it, but most things i play these days are digital DL so even more reason to just wait (now i have bought a few games a day or two before it came out to make sure i have it Downloaded, Skyrim/Borderlands 2) but i dont consider those pre-orders.

  9. #9
    Old God -aiko-'s Avatar
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    I can't understand offering pre-orders right now...on the big "unveiling" the other day they didn't even show any gameplay. They have conceptual art, basically. Pre-ordering the game now is just...blind faith at its worst. I'll wait.

  10. #10
    Pit Lord philefluxx's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zeek Daniels View Post
    The reason i dont pre-order games is because 'whats the point'. Unless its going to be hard to get in your region or area why do you need to put money down on it early?
    And honestly when does that even happen anymore? Long gone are the days like the launch of WoW where you couldn't find a copy for 3 months and people were buying up copies and shipping them to friends on the otherside of the country.

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by aikoyamamato View Post
    I can't understand offering pre-orders right now...on the big "unveiling" the other day they didn't even show any gameplay. They have conceptual art, basically. Pre-ordering the game now is just...blind faith at its worst. I'll wait.
    This is a tendency bad developers are trying to make pass. Just like ME3 and A:CM, make a great ad campaign, hype things up, and don't let people see how lazy and untruthful you were on advance. Do everything to get their money, before they form their opinion about your bad product:
    http://www.vg247.com/2013/02/11/rele...l/#more-338842

    Jesse Schell told it to world.
    He cautioned developers that without a demo to test, gamers will have to buy a game in order to see if it’s any good or not, while demo downloads will often deter players from picking up the full release, rather than encouraging a purchase.

  12. #12
    I was honestly tempted to pre-order Tomb Raider, but after seeing more and more late news about it, I've decided to just lean back and wait. I rarely ever pre-order something now, unless I know for a fact that it'll be good, or if it's a game that I'd just pick up anyway, but there really aren't many like that these days.

  13. #13
    Herald of the Titans Treeskee's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Doozerjun View Post
    Gamestop pretty much has preorders for every single game no matter if it has a release date or what information is released. They usually charge an extra amount ($5 I believe) for those preorders. They just want your money.
    It's not extra, the 5 bucks counts towards the actual price of the game.

    But yeah, personally I only pre-order things that are from franchises I've played and loved or I've been apart of the beta for.

  14. #14
    It is good to see that I am not the only one who thinks that pre-orders are taken too far. Not only it does not make sense to buy a game you know nothing about, but also when I see modern companies going forward and just plainly abusing their uneducated customers, I personally loose all the respect towards said developer/publisher.

    I don't know though how much power a developer has when it comes to the deals like this and I feel bad about them.

    I am originally from Kiev, Ukraine (hence bad English). When I was younger I used to hang out with one of the developers of STALKER from GCS Game World and had a chance to observe how STALKER was bent over and screwed by THQ. Commercial nature of the business is turning gaming industry into a pop waste what we see right now in the music world, represented by Justin Bieber and Talyor Swift alikes.

    Hopefully this will not turn out as just another prehyped failure of a game, as I am all for quality games to be released in the nearest future... running out of things to play!

  15. #15
    Epic! Tribunal's Avatar
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    I only pre-order if I actually think there's a chance it won't be there day of release (so: nothing), if there's a bonus I want (so: nothing so far, most bonuses are pretty crappy), if I want it delivered to me night of (so: nothing so far, most stuff I "have to have that day" I just go and get) or if I'm going to get it at Midnight, and even that has very little point in pre-ordering it, since there are still plenty of copies for non pre-orders. I usually use that as more of a "pre-pay" so I can just swing in, grab it, and leave... though Gamestop's new register nonsense is making that unworkable, so I might stop even that.

    Pre-ordering makes sense for Kickstarter type situations (though that's not personally something I'd do) and any video game with actual scarcity (like some Collector's Editions). That's about it. If you want to do it for anything you ever buy, more power to you, but you're basically just letting Gamestop hold your $5 and hope you forget about it.

  16. #16
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    Quote Originally Posted by philefluxx View Post
    Thats sort of how things happened with Rift. No one really knew much about it until like a month or so before launch and a lot of what we saw was the "Your not in Azeroth anymore" slogans. So it definitely happens, even with titles that become pretty big. Once the open beta launched I pre-ordered the game after about an hour or so. But that was a different time and even console titles have started to release underwhelming and extremely buggy games. Id say I trust preorders less across the board now at days, seems that even with the more hype your more likely to get a crap game...*cough *cough Diablo 3.....
    The last game I pre-ordered were Borderlands 2 and Rocksmith for the PC, and to be honest, it was well worth it to get both. I normally only pre-order games I know I will like, Nintendo tends to see a lot of their games pre-ordered by me because I know they put effort into their games and make sure that they aren't buggy as shit on release day.

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