Yesterday in part 1 of our article, we learned that retailers pay on average about $42 for the $60 video games we buy from them. Today in the continuation of our article we will learn why pre-ordering a game is actually a bad idea most of the time. In the picture above, you can see some of the titles that had the highest pre-orders of the year. I will start with the highest one, Black Ops 2. As a gamer I was a huge fan of Call Of Duty. Modern Warfare 3 actually left me a little disappointed, and Black Ops 2 killed the franchise for me. If you look at the reviews from IGN and Gamespot you will notice that they gave the game pretty high scores, 8's and 9's actually. But if you take a look at the gamer ratings you will see that Black Ops 2 barely hits the 7 mark in a lot of cases, and gets a lot of 6's across the board. Do you know what this means? It means Black Ops 2 was definitely not as good as the scores IGN and Gamespot gave it. I am not saying they are biased all I am saying is that the people have spoken and they are not pleased. I was one of the many people who pre-ordered Black Ops 2 and got it during the midnight release. One day later I had already sold my copy for $20 less than I paid for it. I rated that game a 6 and if you want to know why you can go ahead and read my review on it, believe me there's an explanation for it. The problem here is not that the game is bad, is that we have fallen into this tendency to pre-order games based on the success of the last one and the marketing campaign of the new one. To us, when we pre-order a game what we are trying to say is, this game is going to be amazing and worth every penny on it. To a publisher it says, these idiots will take anything we give them, they are already ordering something that hasn't even come out just based on TV commercials. See when you pre-order a game you're literally giving free and undeserved money to a store, usually they charge you $5 to pre-order but you can pay a game off completely right? Do you know what you get for that? A receipt, that is all, in turn the company who you just gave money to can turn around and make money off your money. That would be like a bank giving YOU say $60 because in 3 months you will give them something worth $60, in the meantime though you invest that money and say make another $60, and you just made free money with no interest. You guys do realize there is no way in hell a bank would ever do this for you. Why would we do it for a game company that does not deliver $60 worth of game to us? Take a look at Darksiders 2, some venues gave it an 8.5 out of 10, but gamers gave it a 6.5! Are you noticing a pattern here? The first Darksiders was pretty good so companies ride that hype and then turn in crap to us, but they see that our pre-orders indicate that we are excited no matter what. There are some awesome games like Borderlands 2 was and I've heard great things about Halo 4 as well and even though Assassin's Creed III failed to impress me, the gaming community disagrees with me and that's ok because that is what this is about, it's not about what all these companies think their game is worth, it's what YOU the player thinks it's worth. It is your money going into it, and lately ladies and gentlemen I've been less and less inclined to spend my money on games, much less pre-order them. I am tired of giving these companies my money and then have a giant turd delivered to me inside a plastic case. When I was younger and had no money for games I knew my choices were very limited by what my parents were willing to buy me, so I had to rely on word of mouth to decide if a game was worth my time. Today we rely too much on the word of a publisher or IGN or Metacritic or Gamespot. You know who I want to hear opinions from? Everyone but them, I want you the reader to tell me what you thought of a game, why is it good, why is it not? Some people raised a point when I was first discussing pre-orders with them. They said "Dude when you pre-order you get more stuff for your game like DLC, or an action figure, or a poster!" Guys I'm sorry but the stuff I have gotten for my pre-orders has in no way affected my enjoyment of a game. Having a few extra weapons that are the exact same as others within the game is not a reward, it's lazy attempt to get at my money. An action figure isn't that great of a reward either, I mean unless you're a real fan of the game this should play no part in your decision to pre-order. Take Batman Arkham City for example. I preordered that game, the special edition. It came with a Batman statue, a movie and art book, the soundtrack, the game, extra Catwoman levels, some challenge maps and extra skins. I'm a Batman fan so the statue was an awesome thing to get. Not having to pay $10 to continue the Catwoman story was great, the soundtrack was pretty good but it was only in digital for and it took me about 30 tries to be able to download it because they had some errors with their page. The extra skins didn't do much for the game and I've never really cared for challenge maps because they do not add to the story of the game. That was awesome for me though because I felt it was worth my money, until I realized that if you didn't have the Catwoman side, the game felt incomplete. There was a part where it just cut you off from some of the story, so you had to spend and extra $10 to get your complete game. Batman Arkham Asylum was an amazing game, but I was angry that other people would get an incomplete game if they bought it used. Why would you give your gamers an incomplete game and then forced them to pay for stuff already in the disc. This has been happening a lot with games lately, if you pre-order you get a code to release things already in your game, if you don't then you have to pay extra cash to get the stuff that you already paid for. You know what? Fuck pre-orders. 90% of the time you can walk into the store the next day and buy the game everyone else got last night. If you want to talk consoles I'll tell you this much. Consoles are always sold at a loss to the company, a console can cost $600 to make, it is sold to the retailer for $400 so they can sell it to you at $500 and make a profit. You think the company takes a loss but they don't. They make it back on their games, and do you know why there's limited run to begin with? Because of the cost involved and the lack of games at a console's launch. A company would lose so much money if it sold a million consoles but it sold no games because there wasn't any. Look at what happened with Mass Effect 3, anyone who has played it knows about the ending, and anyone who didn't heard about the ending, or about the lawsuit the FANS brought up against them for the ending. Sure the lawsuit didn't go through but Bioware listened because it's business was threatened, and what did they do? They fixed their mistake, not before pissing everyone off with the possibility of the alternate ending being a paid for add-on and then decide it should be free, but they correct it. It is in the best interest for a company that you pre-order so they can make more money, not so they can meet demand. I understand that DLC is great for games like COD to get new multiplayer maps or like Skyrim where the adventure continues in the DLC. But when you get DLC that only releases stuff already in your game disc because you preordered, well it gets pretty insulting. Black Ops 2 hardened edition came with an extra zombies nuketown map, some collectable coins and some stuff for your Xbox Avatar or your PS3 background. That was $80, did you know that usually a map pack costs you about $15? The only change in your game was a map which you paid $20 for. The coins and other stuff did not change your gaming experience. They say you get what you pay for, I think that is not always the case. It is just not worth it to pre-order games. Reviews of games are held back sometimes to allow the game to sell and then publish that it's a piece of crap. I rather rely on word of mouth from friends, and family and other people who actually play the game for fun as opposed to business. When I publish my reviews to you guys, it's because I played the game, but the score on the game comes from not only me, but other people who have also played it. I take a lot of opinions into consideration. I think Black Ops 2 made me realize how wrong have I been by pre-ordering a game, and I am not going to tell you that it is always wrong to pre-order, sometimes games are worth the price of the pre-order, like Assassin's Creed 3, I mean you were paying for some awesome items that collector's can really appreciate. The DLC actually added to the game, and even though the game in my opinion wasn't as awesome as it sounded it was a pretty solid performance and it was worth what people paid for it. For the most part though, pre-ordering a game because you think they will run out, or that the game will be great is a big mistake. If your pre-orders stop, companies will have to work harder on making a game good. I want my $60 worth of game on one disc. I don't want to pay extra to be able to finish my game with a complete story. Add-ons are welcome but they should not depend on a pre-order. If you want a special edition because it has some awesome stuff then I get it, but make sure you're getting what you paid for, you cannot imagine how many disappointed faces I saw with the Care Package edition of Black Ops 2. The quad rotor was really crappy. I know some of you may not change your mind and that's fine, but I would strongly suggest that if you want better games you stop pre-ordering and maybe rent a game before you buy it, specially those that you think you will spend a lot of time replaying just like COD or HALO 4. Overall I think pre-orders should be limited to games that may not see a huge release and you really want a copy off or those that actually come with collector's items that are worth it. Take Black Ops as an example, I loved the first game, but a few days after the release, people were already selling the RC-XD online because it was broken, the quality was really bad, and they paid big bucks for that edition.
Stay tuned for our part 3 on this article on the problems that prices and pre-orders are creating for gamers and why. Remember to share us with your friends, and see you all with the last part soon.
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