Honestly, if the idea of no trials don’t bother you, there are plenty more reminders why YOU shouldn’t preorder.
I pre-ordered baldurs gate 3 after playing the developers previous game divinity original sin 2 and hearing a rather large amount of praise for the content available in the early access.
It’s something I wouldn’t regularly do but in their short line of recent games Larian studios have left a very good impression on me and I trust them individually.
I’ve pre-ordered AC Mirage (Amazon version with the physical map etc). but in my defence, i have played every AC game, platinumed most of them, and have NEVER had the pleasure of playing one at launch, so I’m allowed.
But after the fiasco that is Jedi Survivor (Which is now firmly half completed shoved in my backlog), I will never ever buy an EA launch title.
Oh yeah? Well what about the new thing to do that’s even better than pre-ordering. Take Starfield for example. Wanna play it earlier than everyone else? Well their early access option is the one for you.
“Anyone can dive in then if they’re willing to pay the price - it’s only available to those who buy the expensive Constellation Edition of the game (for roughly £250/$300) or the Premium Edition (for about £100/$100)”
Edit: deleted comment was additional edit, realised I could just edit original comment
Early access is different tho…
Because you know what you’re getting, others who already have it are able to post reviews.
A preorder is just giving them money early for zero reason.
For example, I knew I was getting BG3 no matter what. And I know I habitually restart act 1 of RPGs multiple times before picking what I want. So having a chance to run thru (a limited) act 1 a bunch over a year before release was worth it to me.
But there’s no way I’d have just pre-ordered it, there’d be no reason to pay before I got the product.
Sorry forgot to mention. This is an early access option. Pay loads of money, get it earlier than everyone else
I have never pre-ordered a game.
I have however pre-ordered collectables which “come with a game” (despite the collectables likely being more than the game) or the privilege of being able to hang out with my friends at midnight to collect a game on release. And of those games Halo 2, Halo 3, and Battlefield 3 were the only 3.
These days there is even less reason to pre-order, but where I lived and the local small game shop, sometimes the only way to get a game within the first MONTH of release was a pre-order, where the store would literally… Pre order. Its not a pre-order for you at the store, its the store ordering it from the distributor / publisher.
The very first game i ever purchased on Steam was a game where i went in for the 3rd week in a row and they said “sorry, still not had any come in for re-stock”.
And now even more than ever is a BETTER time to pre-order. “Back in my days” good fucking luck being able to return a game if the 7 seals of security purity were not damaged. now, almost universal refunds for digital goods from most of the major game platform hosts.
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There aren’t and won’t be PS5 games like you are imagining. They moved almost everything new into digital and are trying to sell their premium subscriptions. Although I will say I think it’s worth it… $120 a year and I haven’t had to purchase a single game. Some of their titles are awesome too! But it sucks that trading in games will be a relic of the past. When I traded in my Xbox half of my games were literally worthless because they are on gamepass.
Gameflip is cool by the way. They sell games, but they also sell gift cards for like 9-15% discount.
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I mean PS Plus Premium (which is awesome, at least for my first year. Might not even renew next year if I can download enough games).
I am not saying that there aren’t disk games for PS5, just that they are moving away from that direction. By the time the PS6 comes out many of the titles you listed will likely be free on PS Extra and or Premium, so they won’t have value.
But I get what your saying, I always lag behind and like the cheaper old tech. I can’t afford to always have the newest crap. I just upgraded my Galaxy 6 lol.
What do you mean by you wont renew if you can download enough games? Once your sub ends you will lose access to every game you’ve downloaded through the service, even if they are installed on your console. Your license to play the game is tied to the subscription so once that ends you will have no games to play.
Not at the same tiers though, Extra is half the cost and has still has some decent stuff.
So yeah I can’t completely break the subscription chains, but AFAIK you don’t need to retain premium status for games you downloaded… otherwise why would they warn you to download games before they are removed from the list? Storage space is tricky though, that’s how you’re limited.
Edit: I am literally reading stuff from Playstation that says it won’t be there after, but it is. I am so confused…
Nevermind it works like I thought: Can I keep games from PlayStation Plus extra? Each month, two or three PS4/PS5 games are made available to download and play at no extra cost. They are yours to keep as long as you remain a PS Plus member.
I gotcha. I thought you meant you would cancel your sub entirely, not drop to the lower tier
Well the Rumor is that they are going to let you retain with just a Plus membership which is free. I don’t believe that has been implemented yet, but it makes a ton of sense. One huge selling point for premium is the exclusive games, they figure most people won’t be dedicated enough to download everything they want, nor have the storage for it. I already feel like I need an eagle eye to look out for titles before they disappear, there have been a handful of times I looked up a game that I just found out about and realized they just removed it from premium last month and it is now 29.99
Honestly every game I pre ordered I have been happy with especially bg3.
…b-b-but I won’t get the exclusive hat for my character!
They usually sell the pre-order stuff later anyways.
…b-b-but I don’t want to wait because some people will already have it!
Thank you for illustrating what parasitic marketing has executed so well and trained gamers to automatically feel: Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO).
I think it’s an age thing a lot of times. It’s like telling my kids to brush their teeth because of my experiences with dental, or you can plug any example like that.
I can tell kids not to preorder all I want. They just haven’t had the opportunity to be burned as many times as we have yet.
I think it’s an age thing a lot of times.
I don’t have numbers but I bet that a lot of people who preorder aren’t kids but adults with a proper income. Kids as a group don’t have the income to uphold the current presale figures, that’s done by working adults who can afford to preorder a game and take the not so small risk that it’s utterly shit.
If I want I could preoder a lot of games that come out this year without having to worry about the waste of money to much. I doubt that any regular kid can do that.
Hey it’s Lemmy, so I will happily use this opportunity to blame rich people as well. I know people doing very well for themselves, who constantly, say, “yeah it sucks, but I’ve got the money and it doesn’t hurt me so who cares?”
Because they’re so completely unable to to think of ANYONE else in a different situation, or even remember their younger selves, that they will continue to incentivize predatory behavior because “fuck you, I got mine”, and they’re such huge pieces of self involved shit that they won’t delay their gratification for a split second to help out an entire industry’s consumers.
If that sound harsh, it’s been a shit day full of people just like that; decide on your own if it applies here.
It’s funny when you get older how much you realize experience is what drives behavior. You can tell a child 100 times about something, but until they experience it themselves, your warnings more often than not will fall on deaf ears.
This isn’t a kids thing, we’ve been pre-ordering games since before today’s kids were born
yeah, when we were kids ourselves. But after getting burned we stopped.
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I did a quick search and couldn’t find anything that breaks down by age sadly. I really hope someone has the stats cause it would be fascinating to see.
I don’t have the figures either but when I think which age group could have the money to actually preorder a game on a whim without knowing if it will be good, then it really isn’t kids but working adults.
Could you share what you’ve found, please? What other category breaks are there?
The only thing I could find was a statista link that claims to show US gamer’s proclivities toward preordering in 2016 based on a survey of 1560 people (https://www.statista.com/statistics/662626/game-pre-order-frequency-us-gamers/)
Everything other result seemed to be random news articles about topics tangentially related to preordering video games.
I think a lot of gamers just don’t care enough too. I know so many people that buy a game on release, play it for a few hours, and then drop it. Even AAA titles that are actually good.
Steam achievements kinda confirm that as well, there is a fair bit of drop-off on even the most popular games.
I just saw this video the other day, now it’s just all reminders that I’ve aged out.
It made some sense when they came in physical format and there was a real risk of a highly sought game selling out. Nowadays they have put worthless digital incentives on preorders and they can’t possibly run out.
I mean, I usually buy physical and sometimes they do run out. Metroid prime remastered for instance was a pain to get. Granted it’s probably not the norm but it happens.
It didn’t make sense to me that people are pre-ordering digital copies at first too, then I remember mtx and streamers which didn’t exist back then.
It’s the boiling frog syndrome. Gradual implementation of predatory monetization practices like mtx and gachas have made us grown numb to being treated like cash cows for unfinished products.
The latest generation of gamers probably see this as a norm. It’s up to us oldies to remind them about the good ol’ days when you only pay once for finished products.
This right here. There will always be a steady supply of new gamers who don’t know better.
Beta’s used to be free and would actually have an impact on the game getting fixed before shipping out
every game has a built in trial these days. trial the game for up to 2 hours in the first 2 weeks of buying it, and if you don’t like it, steam refund it.
Other people have Xbox, PS, Nintendo…. Not to mention, 2 hours is not enough to trial a game
2 hours is enough to BEAT some games.
To be honest, 2 hours is not enough to trial a game. I recall demos and trials in the old days can last 14 days, some for 30 days, if memory serves me right.
Wasn’t 14/30 days only for subscription/mmo games? From what I recall demos of single player games had from 15 minutes up to 2 hours, depending on the size of the game. That or where applicable it held only first chapter/first few levels.
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I heard that if you “overuse” it though, steam will lock you out of that feature. With cases of using it 10 times / month being seen as overuse. Not sure how real that is though, or if these 10 times were exception.
True. My son has refunded so many games that he doesn’t like, they locked his debit card from the account and I don’t think it can be reinstated. We have to buy the games for him now with our cards.
FF16 wasn’t preordered as much as they wanted. Then when the game turned out to be okay, people bought it (and it had a demo). It was a hit.
The demo really made me want to get it and actually caused me to preorder. I wasn’t even that excited about it until the demo. Once I turned it on and heard the music that instantly transported me to final fantasy, I was sold. Wound up shelving Diablo until I finish the story for final fantasy. It’s long and I’ve loved every moment. The side quests, while being typically fetch quests, have great stories in them that really build on the world.
Sorry, this was supposed to be about preordering and turned into me gushing about final fantasy.
Yeah, I love Final Fantasy. But I wasn’t very hyped for it. I bought it after I played the demo.
I bought it after the demo, and while it definitely hit those highs again, the demo didn’t show just how low some of those lows would be. I made it about 60% though the game before abandoning it out boredom. While a demo is great, it is important to remember you’re likely getting a vertical slice of some of the best bits.
I was super happy for that demo. For me it let me know I wouldn’t enjoy it, so I saved some money.
Normies will continue to pre-order games. You are just shouting at clouds. Please stop wasting our times with these posts. The battle was lost years ago.
Normies can change if burned often enough. I am a filthy casual, and used to pre-order games. Between digital delivery and getting a few stinkers in my library I don’t feel the need, and haven’t for about a decade.
Industry will keep punishing those willing to pre-order until that behavior stops.
I miss the age of videogame demos, it feels like nothing but a distant memory now. And the only reason companies let people play their broken betas now is to gauge excitement for their games and fix any serious game breaking bugs.
for some reason indie games still seem to have demos semi-often, especially if you check their itch.io pages.
We may just have very different tastes in gaming, but there’s really no shortage of solid game demos out there, they’re just usually for the indie stuff.
Yeah, I mentioned that to another person, Steam Next Fest was great this year, I got to try out a bunch of awesome games. But like if we’re talking triple A, or even just games on consoles demos are just a resource sink for a lot of these companies and don’t exist. When there’s a demo there’s usually a lot of marketing push behind it.
Honestly it’s been more incentive for me to move away from the AAA stuff and lean way more indie. They have demos, deep sales, and they make an effort to engage with the community. It is a bummer the lack of demos available on consoles though.
I miss the age of videogame demos, it feels like nothing but a distant memory now.
No it isn’t! With Steam you can try most (if not every) game for 2h and return it if you didn’t like it.
That’s not a demo, that’s a return policy. Plus, in most cases you don’t get a good feel of a game in the first 2 hours of the game. A demo is a snippet of the game made specifically to let people get accustomed to most of the mechanics in a game, something that isn’t usually present in the first two hours.
You could’ve easily said Steam Next Fest and I would’ve agreed with you. Indie devs are the only ones who seem to care about their players these days.
I miss the age of videogame demos
Fuck the corps. That’s what piracy is for.
Pirating big games is probably morally fine. Pirating indie games is shitty, like stealing from a local business.
He is not talking about actual piracy though. Piracy for try-before-you-buy’s sake is even more morally fine.
Eh.
On the flip side, back in the day, a lot of people bought a lot of crappy games based on nothing more than what the cover art on the box showed. The only source of info was video game magazines, and that applied only to new releases and only certain games.
Now upon release you can look up dozens of detailed reviews, even video reviews. You can watch full play through a on YouTube. You can ask for opinions in social media.
The amount of information you have to figure out if this game is for you is insane compared to before.
Depends really. Nowadays publishers push out fake CGI marketing trailers and paid reviews to premptively muddy those information sources long before release. Same goes for social media (not that they were ever reliably accurate or objective anyway). There are even promises of DLC roadmaps that never materialise such as the OW2 story mode.
By the time actual independent reviewers have their embargoes lifted, the preorder sales window has closed and it wouldn’t make much difference to those who already sunk money into the game. Those waiting in vain for DLC and patches are merely sacrificing their refund window.
That’s true. I understand.
I’m also not a fan of the DLC and change to video game design based on such payouts.
But even then, even with fake reviews, young gamers are completely spoiled with information compared to the black hole that existed in the 80s and 90s. I’m not sure how people argue otherwise.
The fact that I can go on my phone, jump on YouTube, and watch a play through is incredible. When I was young, I had to make decisions based on what the box art looked like ffs.
I don’t even play half the games I buy. I just pre-order them so I get the cool goodies that come with the game like art books, metal cases, tapestries, etc.
The last pre-order bonus I got was a pair of socks. That killed my interest in extraneous offers.
I used to do that when I was about ten years younger, now I am mostly trying to get rid of them to save some space as all they do is collect dust on some shelf or box.
I just played the trial for Pikmin 4, then pre-ordered the game
came here to say the same thing, lol. I imagine most other AAA games aren’t finished early enough before release to offer trials like that, though
Nintendo may be shit sometimes, but for the rest of the time it’s almost guaranteed quality
Their games are great. Their lawyers can go skinny-dipping on Pluto.
