PaigeFTW: Is preordering worth it?
For me, preordering a game is a significant event, like going to see a movie on opening weekend.
There are certain franchises that automatically get preordered and purchased, no matter what — anything with the words Final Fantasy in the title, for instance. Or it might just be that the game’s pedigree is very good, or that the trailer was particularly compelling.
The next really big title I have queued up in my Amazon orders is Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. I’ve never really been into the series before, but I have a great weakness for Victorian England and men with debonair top hats killing people.
But preordering games also doesn’t make sense.
Video game prices fluctuate like lifeboats in a hurricane. Prices tend to drop a month or two after release (with the notable exception of most Nintendo franchises). Preordering sometimes feels like a punishment in those cases, like a penalty for early adoption.
It’s worse if you are a slow, plodding gamer like me, even at my most crazed. I often buy games and then ignore them for months. I still haven’t broken the plastic on Arkham Knight, but it’s already $12 cheaper on Amazon. I shoulda waited.
Plus, early adopters get to deal with all the glitches, bugs and patch downloads that tend to plague the game in its early days. The bonus DLC usually isn’t all that great. Waiting is smarter. It really is.
But my justification is that, well, sometimes you have to be a good consumer. I don’t mean that Activision or EA need my precious dollars to survive, because they obviously don’t.
Yet, there are smaller games that I want to support — indies that are just now seeing the light of day, or obscure Japanese import titles that so rarely make the overseas trip to America.
Well, as Phillip J. Fry once said, “Shut up and take my money.”
