Is Pre-Ordering games a gimmick? Do you preorder?

[betelgeuse]

I use to preorder much more about 15 years ago. You use to get a demo of the game or some limited collectable. Most demos or trial versions are online now, or you can watch videos of people who get advanced copies. The giveaways now tend to be $10 off if you preorder or some DLC character skin etc.

Maybe if I lived in a rural area that didn't see many copies of games, I would preorder more. I usually only preorder now to get the special financing when I binge buy.

The only thing I could see that absolutely needed a preorder would be the exclusives direct from the manufacturer like NIS or Square Enix, or if you didn't want that spider net security device strangling your collectors edition packaging.

[cirno]

I don't think it's an inherently negative feature like some people do. If you do your homework there Are times where you can almost guarantee you'll get something you want, so while it's always at least a bit of a gamble, if you know to be wary of hype it's not going to end in disaster every other time. If you almost 100% know you're gonna like a game it's not really a bad idea to ensure you get a copy.

[kashell]

I pre-order often. Chances are stores aren't going to have what I'm looking for on day one if I don't pre-order.

In fact, when I picked up a few VNs, the person behind the counter would mention that the copy I picked up was their store's only copy.

[shfan]

Most of the time if I pre-order it's because it's a time-limited item that requires cash up front (IE a limited release or a special edition, as you mention), which require money (which I'm short of) so that doesn't happen often. The only other time tends to be if I have store credit and one of the few games I must have on release is coming out, then I'll ask the store owner to reserve or order me a copy which I then purchase with credit.

[baileykun]

A lot of games I want only have like 1 or 2 copies per store on launch day so I tend to pre-order.

I also like to avoid buying online when possible because the last time I bought a game online was P4 Golden used. Someone had sticker swapped it with a cheap Harry Potter game and I had to go through the pains of getting an exchange. You couldn't even tell by looking at the cart.

I am also a huge culprit of Kashell's only copy on day one problem when I get things like Project Diva, VNs, and obscure JRPGs.