You could of just waited for a review. Most games today are not even worth buying day one anyway.
I can't speak for others, but I never read (much less trust) "professional" reviews. I put more weight into word of mouth from close friends and other gamers. Also, I know my taste in games and a "professional" reviewer's attempt at humor and biting wit isn't going to persuade or dissuade me from picking something up.
Also (again), I think that if there's a game you want to play then it's absolutely worth picking up on day one.
as someone else who plays niche games, tho, i mean, critics are extremely hard on niche jrpg type titles. they trash all kinds of games i fucking love. i remember tales of the abyss got a 6/10 in game informer... it's in my top 10 of all time tho.
pokemon mystery dungeon got a 3/10. i enjoyed that a lot when i had it. i need to rebuy it.
so there's a general distrust of professional reviewers in the niche community. if you prefer AAA titles, not niche ones, then yes, there is far more stock to be placed in a professional review. they aren't as harsh on AAA titles unless those titles really are absolute dogshit.
re: preorder discussion, you guys must not play a lot of niche games because once you get in that dog-eat-dog world, finding the games months after the release is hard as dicks. esp if you prefer brick-and-mortar stores, so you can check out the case and contents before you buy for imperfections... it gets really hard. and gamestop has a horrible tendency to have a game wiped out of their system and reappear much later (devil survivor overclocked, for a long, LONG time, was NOT in their system... it suddenly reappeared tho and now i see it everywhere).
if it's a game like sorcery saga: curse of the curry god... good fucking luck. haven't seen that game in a gamestop since the day it came out. i regret not preordering. same for mind=0. looking them up, two gamestops near me have these games. they are both 11 miles from me... in opposite directions.
gonna go up and preorder 7th dragon code iii tomorrow in fact lmao. because i want that little art book. also, i imagine it's another 'disappeared to the void' game.
anyway, on topic, as for prices dropping fast, if a game is not a vvvv niche jrpg/vis novel, i never buy at full price. it's also why my wii u has like... no games. if the prices don't drop, i probably don't bother. i'll get them when they're being phased out of gamestop and the prices drop to the bottom of the sea. i regret like fuck not grabbing both baiten kaitos titles at gamestop when GCN was phased out. they were $5 a piece. beating the fuck out of myself everyday for it.
but vvv niche titles are worth preordering even if you don't want to play them that very day... chances are, when you want to, you'll be shit outta luck finding them (HDN re;birth 2, for example, i had to drive out 30 miles for. worth it, but still)
it is really hard, tho, because online-only games... the community either
a) will leave you the fuck behind if you jump in late
or
b) will be dead by the time the price drops [which is why it drops]
so it's really hard to gauge how online-only type games will do. unless it's... splatoon, which ofc was going to keep a thriving online, as one of very, very few online titles on the wii u that's worth half a shit. or CoD, which, again, keeps its communities for ages, guaranteed. the sad fact is, tho, is a lot of online-only games are designed to try to force you to play from day 1, they're designed to leave newbies in the dust, to encourage a fuckload of day-1/week-1 sales. because if you buy a game with tiers and upgrades as an integral part of the game three months post-release... well, you're fucking behind from the get-go and it's a lot of grinding and general bullshit to catch back up.
thus why a game like bloodborn, releasing at a bad time, in an flooded genre like MOBA is right now, has seen a fuckload of returns and a price drop...
and also, realistically, one can only play one online game at a time. you have to be pretty dedicated. online games (esp MOBAs) are perfect for those who only pick up a game a month or one every three months. and what game is successful depends on hype and marketing.
edit: shit, i didn't realise i had accidentally clicked page 2.
i'm really sorry for the thread resurrection, gomen gomen.