News Square Enix cancels Deus Ex AYPO pre-order scheme

I don't get pre-orders, what benefit is it to the publisher/developer?
I can think of a few negative things about pre-orders but not a single positive.

 

It was pretty usefull before games went "digital", when a hard copy was in limited quantity.
But on the other hand, the last game I preordered was SSMB with the GameCube adapter... And it never arrived!
Otherwise there is no reason beyond preorder goodies.

 

The publisher gets the money ahead of time, until a few months ago once the game was released they didn't have to give a penny of it back either.

From their perspective it's a no lose situation. You get the sales before release, minimising your risk in the process and getting an accurate gauge of consumer interest. No more sitting around hoping your product makes back it's money on release week and if a game's pre-orders are poor, cut the budget and release some shonky turd that you still make money on anyway, or chop the last third off and make it DLC.

Of course Steam getting a proper refund policy has thrown a giant bucket of water over that strategy, so we might see pre-orders getting slightly less aggressively anti-consumer, or maybe not.

 

Isn't the game all but finished by the time pre-orders are available though? Granted they could cut back on the final spit and polish but wouldn't that be a tiny amount of the overall spend so far.

 

About time that turgid idea was killed dead. Hats off they killed the program in light of consumer backlash but damn, it was a stupid idea in the first place.

Maybe the good news here, is they won't try the same with the new Hitman...

On the other hand, I am still left with a slightly bad taste by all this, as the article states:

"After much thought and reflection, we decided to close down the programme and make all of the incentive content available to anyone who pre-orders Deus Ex: Mankind Divided or purchases a Day 1 edition of the game."

Right.... so anyone who waits for reviews or buys it after day one, (say day 2 or week 1 for example) but still pays full price gets a lesser experience than the pre-orders or day 1 edition buyers...

An improvement to the first shitty idea true but they are still creating a two tier service!

If only these companies would learn from CD Projekt.

 

Pre-ordering used to be a great thing, particularly for indie developers, because it'd make sure the product would stay afloat while the people who pre-ordered would get early access. Pre-ordering a AAA title today is just, simply put, retarded. You get the game maybe 2 days before anyone else (you really can't wait 2 days?) and the game is such a glitchy mess that it isn't playable until a week after the official release day anyway. Not only that, but these companies already have more than enough money without your input anyway, so, by pre-ordering the game, basically all you're doing is telling the companies "I don't care what this game is like, the game as-is is good enough for me to spend full-price" and now the company no longer has an obligation to improve the game.

And that's how we end up with Arkham Knight.

 

Based on what I've seen with Human Revolution, there will be a few add-on packs that give you the pre-order benefits for a (relatively) small fee. Hopefully. Also, in the case of Human Revolution, the pre-order bonus was just early access to a pair of impractical weaponry.. that I'd immediately drop.

As for myself, despite my dislike of pre-orders and pre-order culture, I am getting the collector's edition, simply because I am willing to pay the full asking price for just the Collector's Edition extras. This was not the case when the augment your pre-order nonsense was going on though, because I simply couldn't bring myself to be part of that disgusting attempt at coercing people to pre-order.

It also helps that the retailer I pre-ordered from only wants 10% of the price as a deposit at order time, with the rest of it to be paid upon collection, so the worst case would be losing that 10% deposit if the game has really serious issues.

 

Most games are up for pre-order six months to a year before they're released (or in Battlefront's case, since E3 2013!).

One of the most expensive parts of development is the last few months of Quality Assurance and fixing (and the possible delays that can come with it). Quite a few publishers give into the temptation to skip it and be damned. Which is where the pre-orders come in, they already got your money, who cares about the reviews and backlash? Of course now there are refunds, the publishers suddenly care.

 

when talking about digital platforms, a pre-order means instant profit regardless of review scores or product quality control - they have already made the pre-order DLC's and they don't need to worry about printing, packaging and shipping on digital making it the perfect sale for a producer. for the customer the reality is these days you get access to a game about a day earlier (assuming you can pre-load it and and boxed copy will require heavy patching on release) and you want an extra mission/weapon/skin that won't change the game (and will be available for a quid 6months later). it's very rare these days a game can't be bought on day one for cheaper than pre-order price.

i'm not immune to the offer of DLC for pre-orders, and i assume most gamers are competionists, but with this practice and kickstarter i must say even the stuff i'm most excited for i can wait on - got mad max shortly after release for £9 and waiting for mgs5 to drop below £20 because for PC especially (see arkham knight) digital pre-orders are a fools errand, wasting both money on higher RRP and unreliability on early patches.

 

In the UK, at least, you're technically not allowed to charge for anything until the item ships. For physical goods especially (not as certain about digital). This is why in the olden days of physical boxed discs etc., when you preorder (for £1 deposit) you got a physical leaflet or trinket or something confirming your preorder because then you weren't paying for something that hadn't shipped...

These preorder numbers were then used by the publishers to know how many copies they needed to produce and where to send them (eg. 56 pre-order and 20 stock for the Brighton Game store for release day). Even now, when you pre-order a physical product from somewhere like Amazon, it's very very clear that you are not charged until your order ships.

So, basically, from the publishers perspective, pre-orders are just a guarantee of getting release-day-price (i.e. overpriced in all cases bar none). From the gamers perspective, it guarantees they get to be "first in line" and play it on day one. The only incentive for the publisher is getting the release-day-price, not really advance cash...