Have Your Say: To Pre Order or Not Pre Order, That is the Question!

[Paul Jeffrey]

With several heavily hyped racing games on the horizon, we want you to ponder the big questions in life... 'Have Your Say' this week asks - to Pre Order or Not Pre Order...

2017 has been a good year for simulation and racing games in general, with plenty of new content having seen the light of day in public already, and plenty more still scheduled to hit before the end of the current calendar year.

With market trends having shifted in the gaming industry over the past few years, and with the increase in digital downloads now making deployment of software to home computers easier than ever before, game developers are offering more and more tempting benefits to players who choose to lay down some money on a title before having an opportunity to test the game for themselves.

Let's face it talk is cheap and games are expensive. Polished marketing talk and viral trumpeting of a particular product is easy enough to achieve if a game company really sets their mind to the task in hand. Once you've parted with your hard earned cash it's usually too late to have second thoughts, and getting as many people to make the investment before a true picture of the game in question can be formed is often a key to financial success in any form of business, not just the games industry itself.

So for today the question we would like to ask you all is:

Pre ordering a game on faith and promotional material, a good idea or unnecessary risk?

The pictures used in this article are used for aesthetic reasons and not related specifically to the above question, so let's not turn this into a game / developer bashing thread please


Feel free to share your thoughts and experiences in the comments section below!

 

[Celeb]

My personal mantra is "no preorders". Promotional material can not represent the feel of games and especially with digital downloaded games, I get nothing out of preordering. I can just buy it on release day if I really want to. Preorder Bonusses are a trap most of the time.

 

[Giovaneveterano]

I never preorder. I don't care if I miss some content they add, I don't wanna risk to be fooled.

 

[Btnuker]

I only preorder when there is a beta or Early Access. I bought Assetto Corsa and Dirt Rallye for 20 euro in EA and it was a great deal otherwise I don´t see any advantage. Preorder bonus is mostly crap. In racing games the car physics and ffb is the most important thing and you have to try this yourself because you can not feel this through youtube.

 

[Matthew Allington]

I usually never pre-order. Broke my golden rule for DiRT 4 and that didn't work out all that well. So I won't be pre-ordering anything else for a while to come....

 

[ears]

OK that's pressed one of my buttons.

YOU'RE NOT PRE-ORDERING IT!! YOU'RE ORDERING IT!!

By definition a pre-order is something you would do BEFORE ordering. So the outcome of a pre-order would not be a placed order or transaction.

This is a pre-release order.

Amazon have a lot to answer for.

 

[Matthew Allington]

@ears You may be right, but "pre-order" as we use it today has become common phrasing.

Pre-release order
Pre-' order
Is that gramatically correct or is my English ****? (Forgive me I left English as a subject behind when I left high school! )

 

[Queequeg]

Nope. Not after pre-release ordering X Rebirth. I learned my lesson.

 

[Chobonator]

Buy early, get hyped, download early, try for 2 hours, refund.

 

[Mr Latte]

Seriously what or why are you guys debating?

PRE RELEASE as in order prior to being released = PRE ORDER.
ORDER as in do such at some point AFTER the title has been RELEASED.

I'm about to pre-order Forza 7 Ultimate.
I think I may enjoy it more for being "what it is" and with its content over doubts with F1 2017 or Project Cars 2.

 

[Kenny Paton]

The only one I've ever pre ordered was GTR 2 from my local game shop and probably won't ever again, but have paid for early access which on reflection seems like an anomaly.

 

[UMC 22]

For me, the only reason to pre-order games was to ensure you got yours before your local store ran out of stock, leaving you waiting around and unable to play. Since the vast majority of PC games are delivered via digital downloads these days, there literally isn't any reason to bother anymore. By the afternoon of day one, there are usually hundreds of player reviews which enable you to make a somewhat informed choice about what you're buying, and with today's download speeds you can usually have the game inside of two hours from purchase. As for the stuff they give away with pre-orders, most of it is pointless and often released a few months later as a DLC, so who cares?

 

[FeltHat]

I mostly dont preorder since rly dont feel a need. I have a huge backlog (around 50 games ), i want to finish those, no need to add something there. I only preorder games im huge fan of and/or find good deal so for example i preordered Metal Gear V(bundled with graphics cards so u could find one cheap), Dark Souls 3, bought gsce as preorder for ams , new wolfenstein, Portal 2. Im pretty sure ill preorder reiza18, the last of us 2, death stranding

 

[kedy89]

 

[Stanislas]

Nowadays they even could have try to sell you something without telling you what it is... like a mysterious GT3 Pack!

 

[Chobonator]

Nowadays they even could have try to sell you something without telling you what it is... like a mysterious GT3 Pack!

I bet it has the Bentley! Better get it while you can.

 

[ears]

Seriously what or why are you guys debating?

PRE RELEASE as in order prior to being released = PRE ORDER.
ORDER as in do such at some point AFTER the title has been RELEASED.

I'm about to pre-order Forza 7 Ultimate.
I think I may enjoy it more for being "what it is" and with its content over doubts with F1 2017 or Project Cars 2.

Order definition
request (something) to be made, supplied, or served.

I totally concede that that's what millions and millions of people mean when they use those terms.

I'm just saying that they're all wrong that's all.

And @Paul Jeffrey if you must use the term, it should be hyphenated! Double jeopardy!

 

[melanieuk]

Nowadays they even could have try to sell you something without telling you what it is... like a mysterious GT3 Pack!

You mean dis ?
http://store.steampowered.com/itemstore/365960/detail/1001/
That's just there way of marketing, different company same [Beep] way of marketing their product as the old company, none existent marketing or promotional skills what so ever.

 

[shimon.ifraimov]

NO

 

[JPL083]

Two pre-order's in my history. Dirt Rally and PC1. Other went well and other... Well... Not so well... Well lol. But oh well xD. I dont like it or do it if i'm not quite sure what i'm getting. It's the thing like example buy a game where is GT3-grid, vanilla has Nissan GTR and if you pre-order you get rest of the field kinda selling. Or like shooter's. Pre-order to get stuff with what you can beat other's kinda deal, of course they are making money but for a lot of people those thing's are ruining the experience's. It should be like pay the money, get the game, everyone get's the same stuff. Pre-order and Premium also both should vanish.