For all you guys out there that are refusing to preorder because of your “principles”. It’s a Eurogamer article, so just mentally substitute “£” for “$”, “quid” for “dollars”, “Friday” for “Tuesday”, etc. The message is what matters. You don’t even have to read it, but I figured I would give an outside source as backup for the rant upon which I am about to embark. Important parts in bold.
The middle is the particularly important part. It talks about how in-house developers are not actually given a slice of the profit from video game sales. 343 is an in-house developer at Microsoft. They work on salaries, and they can be given bonuses for going above and beyond.
For example: if Halo 5 makes $200 million, that money goes to Microsoft, not 343. 343 employees are paid their salary, and maybe get a bonus if they exceed expectations. Not only do they not get your money when you preorder, they don’t get your money at all. They get Microsoft’s money, regardless of how much revenue the game may generate. If Halo 5 bombs and sells ten copies, 343 will still make the same amount of money that their salary dictates. I don’t think they’d be earning a bonus, or be given a big budget for their next game, however.
A lot of people seem to think that if they preorder, they’re giving money directly to 343 before the game is finished. That is lunacy. The money goes to whichever retailer you preordered from. Basically, you’re not buying the game early, you’re buying an “arrangement” that looks like this: “you give us the money early, and we’ll hold a copy for you when it comes out”. Now to apply that same arrangement digitally: “you give us the money early, and we’ll let you download and install the game early so that you can get right to playing once it releases”.
Your “principles” mean nothing. Refusing to preorder doesn’t send a message; it’s not a protest. Nobody cares. 343 employees walk home with the same numbers on their paychecks, whether two people preordered or two million people preordered.
And to spin it the other way, refusing to preorder from a physical retailer is irresponsible and inconsiderate. Preorder numbers from physical retailers like Gamestop are used for one purpose: to gauge how many copies they need to have delivered to the store for launch day. Depending on the store’s location/popularity, they’ll order a certain amount of “backup” copies on top of their preorder copies. These backup copies are what you buy if you did not preorder. For reference, my local Gamestop is fairly popular (they see a lot of business), and they only order ~12 backup copies.
So if you know for a fact that you are going to buy the game day one from Gamestop, but you refuse to preorder, the only thing you are accomplishing is buying a backup copy, which could very well deny somebody else a copy of the game. That is just plain old inconsiderate. You could say “well I guess they should have preordered then”, but not everybody who buys a game day one has had clear intentions to do so beforehand. Maybe a friend of theirs picked it up earlier and showed it to them, which made them want to go out and buy the game. Maybe they weren’t sure if they could afford it and had to wait and see. On top of that, if you suggest that someone else place a preorder, where are your “principles” then? Clearly they don’t actually mean all that much to you if you would suggest someone else to take such a blatantly contradictory course of action.
