Preorders: Good or bad for games?

[Steel]

Not an issue of if preorders are good for you in terms of saving money, but in terms of the quality of the finished product.

I think there are two major factors that preorders affect in terms of game development. The first is that if a game is getting a decent number of preorders then the development team is able to have some breathing room from the management as there isn't so much of a cash crisis right now and the game is more likely to be successful later. That means the game can afford to go a little longer before release giving the developers more time to work on it.

The second factor is that if management sees decent sales without the product even being done they might be keen to get it out the door as soon as possible while it has good press and just get some money out of it at full price rather than sink more money into development that, to them, is only going to give marginal returns.

The converse may be true as well, that potentially less strong preorders than expected could push the game out the door earlier to minimise development costs for something that could sink anyway, but I can't see that causing people to put more effort into the development generally.

What is everyone elses opinion: do preorders give a net boost to the quality of games in general?

[General Zod]

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Most games don't go on pre-order until there's a release date announced, which usually means the game's almost finished. I'd be less inclined to dismiss your post outright if you had some actual examples of games being affected by this.

[charlemagne]

Hilarious Preorders are just a way to milk money out of fanboys before they even get to play the game. Just to be clear, I preordered stuff before, too But I'm sure that not one cent of preorder money goes into development, it's just a good way for publishers to start cashing in before even hitting the shelves.

[Zixinus]

My opinion is that a preorder is only worthwhile to people who have taken a blood oath to buy the game on release, so they might as well save some money for a preorder. And to be that committed you either have to have a large trust in studio, very gullible with the marketing or a fan of the franchise.

I don't know about whether developers like it or should like it. On one hand, yeah, it puts money on the table before the game is even released. But on the other hand, it could become sort of a false indicator of the game's success.

[charlemagne]

I don't know about whether developers like it or should like it. On one hand, yeah, it puts money on the table before the game is even released. But on the other hand, it could become sort of a false indicator of the game's success.

Yeah... take a look at Age of Conan for example. IIRC one million people preordered or bought the game on release, and not even a year later they merged some servers for lack of population.

[General Zod]

My opinion is that a preorder is only worthwhile to people who have taken a blood oath to buy the game on release, so they might as well save some money for a preorder. And to be that committed you either have to have a large trust in studio, very gullible with the marketing or a fan of the franchise.

I don't know about whether developers like it or should like it. On one hand, yeah, it puts money on the table before the game is even released. But on the other hand, it could become sort of a false indicator of the game's success.

What kind of shady companies are you preordering from? Whenever I preorder a game I've never had to pay until it was almost ready to ship.

[Wing Commander MAD]

I'd say it largly depends on the type of preorder. Stuff like fluff and maps can be worthwile to some fans, and I imagine its more or less tends to be formally writing down stuff you already have in design docs somewhere anyway. Feelies, like miniatures, I'd imagine require little to no effort on the part of the dev team directly (maybe artists), of course that also means that only the publisher may get anything from them. Items, skins, and other in game things are though I imagine generally more trouble than they're worth as it requires the devs to implement a system (usually involving preorder codes) which is time not spent working on the game proper, even if it is rather trivial to implement. The best example of this I can think of is Dawn of War II, where practically every distributor had their own set of ingame wargear (items) for preorders. The only genre I can think of that would benefit from any extra revenue from preoders as far as development goes would be MMOs (especially subscription based ones), as they generally in a constant state of development. I know Flagship Studios used preorders, and in particular preorder only life-time subscriptions, to try to make ends meet (they still epicly failed, and ened up making the modern day Daikatana).

[Blayne]

Preorders are alright if they offer a bunch of grovy free stuff with it, I'm mad more 100% completion like that.

[ArmorPierce]

I remember a store that was taking preorders for starcraft 2. This was years ago.

[Stark]

I've mad 100% a but myself.

I preordered because I can return it and they never want the plastic dingus back. Oh yeah, Red Faction robot toy lol.

[adam_grif]

I hate it when they make exclusive content for people who preorder. I'm such a sucker that I fall for it every time. Mass Effect 2 most recently. I felt paranoid that I wouldn't be getting the preorder armors, but then I got them and they sucked anyway.

[Crazy_Vasey]

You can sometimes get a decent discount from a pre-order. I got Dragon Age for £17.99 on the day of release and I knew I'd buy it eventually anyway even if just out of morbid curiousity, so why not? I don't think I actually used any of the stupid pre-order crap that they had in the game but it saved me some cash.

[adam_grif]

You can sometimes get a decent discount from a pre-order. I got Dragon Age for £17.99 on the day of release and I knew I'd buy it eventually anyway even if just out of morbid curiousity, so why not? I don't think I actually used any of the stupid pre-order crap that they had in the game but it saved me some cash.

What's the normal price?

The highest preorder discounts we ever get are "ten dollars down, ten dollars off" deals from EB Games. Bringing it down from 100 to 90, usually.

[Crazy_Vasey]

The RRP for a brand-new, big-name game like Dragon Age is normally £34.99. You'll never pay that much, normally, of course, not if you use decent Internet shopping locations, but £17.99 was still a fairly decent discount. Probably saved me a tenner or so.

[loomer]

It depends. I've done two pre-orders. One for Spore, the week before it came out, while I was in serious, crazy levels of denial about 'it will be a good game'. That one was just bollocks.

The other is for Mount and Blade, which was more like paying for a beta spot. I got in at like, .540 and it was half-price accordingly, and the money went right to the devs to fund the project direct. That kind is probably one of the best for gaming, since you get your hands on an early copy, the devs get a large feedback pool, and it keeps a steady flow of income going for indie devs.