Games

Because you can just watch gameplay now

I already pre-ordered both Diablo 4 and Baldurs Gate 3 this year and am quite happy I did both.

In general I agree but the transparency level shown by the Cities Skylines 2 team has me rethinking this.

Personally, I still preorder games but look to use retailers with easy cancellations that do not bill until shipment, and have lowest price guarantees. I’ve occasionally saved a decent amount of money by preordering on say Amazon because a game I had an order on momentarily dropped right down in price before being bumped back up, and I payed the lower price. Collectors editions for less than the standard, and the like. In more recent times as an example, I got Far Cry 6 Gold Edition (with season pass) for $79AUD day one where the retail was $149AUD for that edition.

It’s quite predatory, but sometimes the preorder bonuses are alright too.

If it’s looking like a game will suck, or my preorder price isn’t good, then I may cancel approaching the release. I do try and stick to developers or franchises I trust...Nintendo and the like.

I’m ordering physical games here rather than digital. In Australia Day one or week physical sales are often cheaper, and then the games jump back up. In the case of Nintendo published games, they then often stay high for a long time and almost never drop dramatically, so I see no reason not to grab those titles early if I’m confident in the game itself, as I won’t save much or anything waiting.

Honestly every game I pre ordered I have been happy with especially bg3.

I very rarely buy early access anymore, but the small amount that I have, I've been 9 times out of 10 happy with it. Battle it is awesome, BeamNG drive is awesome, Barotrauma is awesome. But sometimes I don't quite hit the mark but the game ends up turning out better later on like No Man's Sky and Cyberpunk. But usually, if it's from a "triple A" developer/publisher, I will not buy it in early access, those are the ones people really really need to adhere to that with.

It's installed when I want to play it. Usually the counter I hear is that internet is fast enough where that isn't a problem. This is an argument, that gamers use to contend when the idea of online only was considered by Microsoft. The fact that I can preinstall 100GB of data beforehand at my leisure is worth it.

Especially now considering that steam offers free refunds up to 2 hours of gametime or 15 days after release? Realistically on PC there is very little reason to argue against it at this point in my opinion (obviously this is referring to PC, no need to do that for Consoles that don't provide these opportunities.

This isn't really a pro preorder, I just lost my frustrations with it when the risk was mitigated