I just preordered ~90% of the games I'll buy this year

So, Best Buy and Visa Checkout have a deal going right now (I think through the 25th) where you get $25 off a purchase of $100+ when you use Visa Checkout. What's great about this is (1) you don't need a Visa card; (2) it stacks with Gamers Club Unlocked; (3) it works for preorders; and (4) you aren't charged for preorders until they ship.

End results is I've locked in preorders for every announced Nintendo Switch game I want through the end of the year. Comes out to around $40 for a game at MSRP of $60, and you can just walk into a BB and pick it up at launch.

Amazing deal if you want to plan ahead your purchases this year. Just wanted to share as I know I'd have been upset if I missed it.

Get ready for the wave of people telling you pre-ordering is a sin.

I do not understand why people hate pre-ordering, you see a game you want why not pre-order I order all my games from amazon, pre-ordering the games I know I am going to get just makes things a lot easer. It is one of the things the GB crew keep talking about they hate it but never explain why they hate it.

If you're getting a discount with your pre-order then all the power to ya.

@bonelesszombi said:

The hate typically comes from horrible pre-order bonus practices designed to encourage people to buy a game sight unseen. Also seeing people constantly complaining about how a game they pre-ordered is broken or horrible on day 1 is pretty annoying too. Typically being skeptical of pre-ordering games is good, but if you know you're absolutely going to buy it either way then go crazy with it.

@bonelesszombi: Some people are convinced that companies willingly make their games worse because people preorder.

With the buggy releases these days I understand the sentiment, I just can't stand the underlying presumption that anyone who pre-orders anything is a moron who doesn't know what they're doing. I've been buying my own games for 20-something years and some games I am either just confident enough in the quality to not worry about reviews (say, Persona 5), or am simply hyped enough that no force on heaven or earth would stop me from picking it up day 1. (Say, Persona 5.)

I could count the number of times I've felt burned by this on one hand (if that), so sometimes I have to wonder if most people are just bad consumers.

I definitely kept the fact some games ship with key features buggy or unfinished in mind. Nintendo's got a pretty good track record though and that's mostly what I preordered, especially since most of their games hold value. Other stuff I can just get a month after launch for $40 if I need to. Plus, you aren't obligated to actually buy. I've just locked in an option to buy on the cheap.

Don't cry if any of those games end up being broken and shitty. As a pc gamer the quality of the port is really important to me, so I almost never buy anything until I've seen a few videos and know what to expect.

A flat $20 discount is nothing to sneeze at, as long as you're willing to accept that some of those games will probably not be great.

Something's not adding up here.

The other reason preordering anything on PC is stupid is because usually the week after release is when all the digital stores (and lets face it, you wont be buying retail) have price wars and you can get a new game for half the retail price if you're savvy enough.

For consoles though, I'll preorder if the game is a known entity. For instance I've Yakuza 0 and Nier Automata preordered because I know what I'm getting with those. On the other hand I wont be preordering Nioh because I want to wait for reviews and see if there is more to that game than nighttime, foggy forests and grindy bosses.

I don't mind when people pre-order games, but it's annoying when those people go crazy when the game is dissapointing in some way. It's the risk you're willing to take for bonuses.

I didn't like preordering at a store or whatever before, incase the game was just bad. Usually waiting for reviews was what I liked to do. Now that I have Prime however, that extra 10 bucks off a preorder is super nice, so I have no qualms preordering stuff that I'm 85% certain I'll like.

@werupenstein: That's with the GCU discount stacked on. With a 20% GCU discount, the games ring up as $48, so 2 games plus a pack of batteries can get you to $100. Subtract $25 and add in taxes and it comes to about $80-85 = $40 per game. And I forgot to mention GCU itself qualifies for this promotion, so you can bundle that in towards the $25 off too.

The problem with preordering is that people preorder things like No Man's Sky, having bought into the hype cycle, and then lose their shit and expect refunds and go on witch hunts after learning the error of their ways. The point is that marketing departments do not want you do be informed decision-makers if that means not buying their game, so they will always try to show their product in the best possible light and try to get you to preorder whether the product is good or not. So if you buy into that and commit your money before other sources (whichever other sources -- professional games media outlets, Youtubers, Twitch streamers, some dudes on Twitter or a forum whose interests align with your own, just anyone other than the devs/publisher) can provide you with a clearer picture of what the game is, then you're exposing yourself to a high risk of being burned. For numerous reasons this situation is unlikely to ever get better, so waiting to see if the game pans out before jumping in is an important defensive measure, and by preordering you're throwing that away -- not to mention the wallet vote that says "I support these preorder bonuses you are running and encourage you to run more of them in the future."

Mind, if it's a game that you'll buy regardless because you need to know, and the money's going to be the least of your concerns if it's bad, then go ahead. Zelda: BotW could be utterly broken and devoid of worthwhile content, a true stinker, and I could be totally aware of this beforehand, and I'd still get it, so I'll probably preorder that.

@fnrslvr: There were a lot of warning signs with a game like No Man's Sky though. As someone who pre-orders often that's exactly the type of game I look at and think "I'll wait and see". Publishers may try to paint their games as well as possible, but in most cases you can get a good idea of what you're in for well before release if you do some research and have some intuition. And if you can't then that's probably not a game you want to pre-order.

@zeik: Sure, I guess? I don't think you can rely on instinct all the time, though: who would've thought that the Master Chief Collection would have broken matchmaking for weeks/months?
Maybe what's borne you through the preorder minefield is mostly luck?

Regardless, you stand to gain pretty much nothing from preordering games, and people continue to get burnt by preorders, and "stop preordering games" is an easier and more effective message than "don't preorder games unless they're really likely to be fine," so the former message is what you hear.

The only thing wrong with pre-ordering is when people do it then complain about a game's quality after it releases. As long as you're willing to take the risk of paying for something before you have it (which is hardly a risk for many games) it's a totally normal thing to do.

Congrats on your deal findings =)

I have been preordering during e3 for years as retailers usually offer a discounts. I know I will buy them anyways so why not save tons of cash.

@fnrslvr: Some of it might be luck. In an alternate reality where I I gave a shit about Halo I might have bought the Master Chief collection. But 20 years is far too long to suggest it's mostly luck, because I am not that lucky, and I play a lot of games.

In the olden days I started pre-ordering games because many of the games I liked were very niche and stores often only ordered a handful of copies total. If you didn't pre-order there was no guarantee there would be a copy available to buy. These days I order 95% of my games online, so that's less of an issue, however, thanks to services like Amazon Prime I can get free release date shipping and a significant pre-order discount, so there's actually still legitimate incentive to pre-order. If I decide there's a game I want to play day 1 I'm basically throwing away money by waiting too long.

More power to ya duder. Get it in 2017. (And by it, I mean savings)

Nintendo games are specifically weird on price. They'll stay that the $60 price for years. So if you're going to be buying w/in the first year or two getting that price down to $50 or $40 is pretty legit.

@zeik: You summed up my feelings perfectly.

The reason I have a problem with preordering is because it does three separate and harmful things:

1. It shifts the incentive for publishers from ensuring that they make good products that review well, get good word of mouth and sell well as a result to a glitzy marketing campaign that makes whatever promises it needs to in order to boost presales. In other words, the incentive shifts from quality to packaging.

2. It weakens the consumer's only leverage: spending power. If/when things go awry with a game, a publisher is far less likely to respond meaningfully, generously, or ethically if they already have all our money. If we want our spending power to retain any leverage for the kinds of practices we'd like to see or not see in the gaming industry, we need to keep dollars until products are complete.

3. When things go wrong (like in the case of No Man's Sky), developers are left to bridge the gap between preorder expectation and reality. This one is admittedly a bit nebulous, but the reframing from publishers taking a risk on a game they think will do well to publishers counting on a game that has presold well invariably puts more pressure on the developer. Why subject developers to even more abuse and stress? As a rule no one sets out to make a bad game -they're way too much work to waste the time- and most of the negative trends we talk about in games come from the publishing side, so why not make publishers shoulder a fairer share of the burden?

Of course, I'm not saying that people that preorder video games are bad, or that they shouldn't be aloud to, just that I think there's a pretty strong ethical argument not to. Like eating meat. I understand that it's much better for the planet if I don't...but I like hamburgers. We all pick our battles,

I never understood the insane hate for preordering. It's neither all good or all bad, but most people need to set firm rules for themselves in order to keep from being too impulsive so I guess I get that. Decades of gaming and I've never placed a preorder that I wasn't able to cancel.

Do you honestly find the argument against preordering confusing? It's not complicated. Ordering a game before other people have played it to tell you if it's broken or a total piece of junk is pretty dumb.

Obviously, the calculus changes a bit if you're getting a big discount or you think the bonuses are genuinely worthwhile.

I'd rather gradually add to a purchase over time, than plonk down the full amount on the day. That's not to say I haven't done that for new games but there are plenty I would not have played if I didn't pre-order.

I'm not dumb.

What do you suggest? That nobody in the world buys a game on day 1 and everyone waits for reviews to tell you if the game is good? If you don't see at least 246 problems with that logic, then perhaps think twice about calling people dumb.

First of all, and most blatantly obvious, what if reviews state the game is mediocre or very disappointing which will pursuade you from not buying it, while if you went ahead and bought it because you thought you would like it you'd end up loving the game yourself? If we take Giant Bomb reviews I can name countless examples of them reviewing a game in a way I don't agree with at all and I can point you to threads on these boards of people jumping on the hype/hate train because Giant Bomb said so. It's so crazy that it even gets to the point of GB getting something wrong and people on these boards just mindlessly repeating that sentence as if it's a fact.

Second, if you leave reviews out of the equation, 'ordering a game before other people have played it' is nonsensical. Who is going to play it if everyone has to wait for everyone else?

Third, if you are really excited to play a game because it is completely for you, what do you do? You still wait to see what people say on it? I have no idea why you're so fearful of a negative outcome or perhaps you're just not resourceful to figure it out. I've had just about 0 instances of that happening to me. Whenever I am super excited for a game, it is always great.

Fourth, your entire argument collapses on itself for me because what you suggest is not anywhere close to the information you want. You know the games of the top of my head that I regret buying (for a certain price)? DOOM; because reviews and people here told me it was the best shooter in recent years. Turned out I wouldn't have minded paying about 40 bucks less for it. Shadow of Mordor; because pretty much same reason. Turned out I never would have bought that game otherwise as I find it terrible. The Witness; because people tell you it is the best puzzle game they've ever played and it is extremely unique. Turns out it's 'a puzzle game'. No Man's Sky; yeah, that one is on no one but the devs. Not to even mention the stuff that gets bashed and turns out to be amazing like XCOM 2.

I've gotten burned precisely because people hype or bash something into the ground. Because reviews heavily lean one certain way or because people claim something is broken when it totally works. I'm not dumb for having an opinion. There are no draw backs to pre-ordering anyway. It just reserves you a copy. What is even the big deal about it?

Easy, there. Smart people do dumb things all the time.

You're still not explaining what the advantage of preordering is. Waiting a week or two after release not only gives you a ton of critical and player opinion, it protects you from buying horribly broken garbage. Preordering gives you... what? A day one copy of a game you'd have absolutely no trouble getting ahold of two weeks later?

Kinda seems like you're afraid your opinion of a game will be affected by other people. I agree there are games many people hate that I like and vice versa, but getting the game a week or two earlier doesn't change that.

The thing that confuses me about discussions on preorders is why anyone cares about what other people are preordering. For starters, day 1 and week 1 sales are becoming less important and business models are constantly shifting (see Hitman 2016). So I don't really buy the "rewarding bad behavior" argument.

I hardly ever preorder, but I do sometimes. And I don't do it for bonuses, I do it because I'm busy and some games I know I'm going to get and I don't need to wait for reviews. I like having that game waiting at my door on release day (with a little discount thanks to Amazon Prime). But yeah, I could not care less about what anyone else preorders. The fact that people get mad about what others preorder is just kind of silly to me.

I'm not sure where you're getting anger from. "Don't preoder" is consumer advice offered in response to people who buy games early and then get REALLY angry when they're broken. Not to suggest that getting saddled with bad/broken games is the fault of the consumer, but to point out that the only real way to protect yourself from that sort of thing is waiting to see how games shake out after release.

@frytup: Sometimes you just know you're going to buy a game on day one. Getting 33% off sounds like a great deal in this case.

I don't think anyone in this thread who preorders lots of games has offered up a compelling reason as to why that's a good thing. If you can get it at a steep discount, I guess. But Amazon gives their 20% discount on preorders up to 2 weeks after release.

I used this deal for Zelda and Mario Kart on the Switch a few days ago. Glad to see everyone else in this thread thinks it's a good deal, too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nice strategy. Of all things to pre-order, big first-party Nintendo games are probably most likely to deliver on quality, even if they don't blow you away.