Weekend Recovery: The Special Pre-Order Limited Time Deluxe Edition
It's Weekend Recovery, your Monday morning, 9 AM intellectual gaming discussion fix. Have a suggestion for a Weekend Recovery topic? Send your ideas to mixvio@gaygamer.net and you might see your name on the grand marquee!
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Attaching special bonuses to an upcoming release, serving as a magical enticement to get you to fork over cash before a title comes out, is not a new practice-- nor is it reserved to the gaming industry. I'm personally well familiar with receiving all sorts of solicitations for buying a CD before its release date, from bonus songs to videos to promo concert codes. With games, bonuses come specific to the retailer you're purchasing from too, with GameStop in particular usually running away with the lion's share of consumer "gifts."
Nevertheless, as commonplace as this practice is, am I the only one thinking things are starting to get a bit out of hand? Last week my email inbox was greeted by an Impulse announcement notifying me about their particular pre-order bonuses for Dragon Age: Origins. One of the items in particular, a special ring that increases your XP when worn, really threw me for a loop. I mean, in a MMOG this kind of thing makes sense-- I got such an experience-boosting item for buying the collector's edition of Aion, for example-- but in a single player RPG? Why do I need to collect XP faster?
When pre-orders are vehicles for anything from otherwise unavailable items to even demos, I start to wonder if the only way to get a full game is to buy multiple copies of it from every retail outlet and online distribution website.
So, to you readers. Do you feel like these value-added incentives are getting absurd, or do you appreciate the varied choices left to you? And secondary question, do these pre-order items ever tip the balance for you? Personally if I'm going to pre-order a game, I was going to do it already and the special presents are icing on the top, but never anything that seals the deal. What about you?
mixvio
Posted to Miscellany on 19 October 2009
· Comments (3)
Other stuff like this: preorder, special offers, weekend recovery
There have definitely been times when pre-order bonuses have determined whether I pre-order a game or just get it used later on. I already owned all 3 Metroid Prime games so I was planning on holding off for a while on getting the Trilogy, but a pre-order came with a poster and shirt that the Metroid fanboy in me couldn't resist.
I'm also noticing it a lot more now going into the holiday season. There are a ton of games that I want, and realistically I won't be able to afford all of them right when they come out, so the order that I get them in is determined by the pre-order goodies. They're all games that I'm going to get eventually, but my pre-order tendencies are favoring games like Dragon Age and Borderlands where I get a little something extra as opposed to A Boy and His Blob and Demon's Souls that didn't. Dragon Age I probably would have pre-ordered anyway, but I'm not sure that I would have gone with Borderlands over Demon's Souls had it not been for the pre-order.
As for the XP ring bonus, I see that as more valuable in a single-player RPG than in a MMO. Single-player RPGs are more story based, and gaining XP faster cuts down on your level grinding time so that the story's pace doesn't draw to a halt partway through. Of course, if there's an oddly low level cap (like Fallout 3) then gaining XP faster might just make you bored since you'll reach the cap long before the end of the game. I don't know what Dragon Age's level cap is though, so I don't know if that's going to be an issue. But at least most JRPGs have experience boosting items that are extremely useful.
I like the practice of including bonus stuff. Atlus is one of the companies that manages to get its bonuses right and I've always appreciated what they tend to include--usually a soundtrack or artbook. I especially like that the deluxe edition of Demon's Souls came with a full strategy guide because, well, the game is maddening without a little help.
A lot of companies are getting the pre-order and collector's edition crap completely wrong though. The figures that came with Street Fighter IV are lame and ridiculously tiny and the movie that came with it is barely watchable. They should have gone for the approach BlazBlue did and include a DVD with strategies and artwork. Another game I think is getting poor treatment is Modern Warfare 2 and really goes to show how absurd some collector's editions are getting. Three separate editions of the game and one with working NVG is a bit extreme. Can't I just have my metal case and maybe an artbook?
The only special edition I bought was just the other day with Uncharted 2.
I was going to buy it anyway since I had pre-ordered it on Amazon months ago. I cancelled that and bought the special edition from game for £40 so it wasn't too bad.
Though I wouldn't go and buy a game just for the special things you get with it.
My opinion on it all is that they are good, but if you're going to package skins in one edition then they should be the same for all of them. Why on earth would I want Prakoso (some unknown pirate from uncharted 1) over Navarro?