The Battle of Buying a Game
If
you’re like me and you love video games, chances are you bought something this
past week. Be it the brand new Nintendo Switch, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Horizon: Zero Dawn, or
something entirely different, it’s a great week to be a gamer.
So
that means it’s time to look at how the game industry messed with things and
made them way more confusing than they needed to be.
We’ve
spoken in the past about collector’s editions and how games can sometimes go overboard with how many different versions end up on the market, but this week
I’d like to focus on the release of Horizon
and Zelda and how the
distribution of said collector’s editions created unnecessary headaches for
those interested.
One
week before Zero Dawn reached zero
hour, the good folks over at IGN posted this article: “A Complete Guide to Horizon: Zero Dawn’s Pre-Order Bonuses”. The
fact you need a guide in the first place is concerning, but let’s give then the
benefit of the doubt and read along together, shall we?
Fortunately
we don’t have another Watch Dogs 2 situation
on our hands here, looking at only 2 separate editions overall. There’s the
Digital Deluxe edition, purchasable from the PlayStation store and getting you
a background theme and a few in-game weapons, as well as the physical Collector’s
Edition, which features the usual goodies like a statue, an art book, a
steelbook case, and so on and so forth.
The
article then goes on to detail all the different stores and their varying
pre-order bonuses and discounts, such as GameStop giving out posters, Best Buy
offering discounts for those with memberships, and Target having…nothing. Huh.
So
what’s the problem here? Like I said before, this isn’t like Watch Dogs again where you needed a
freakin’ spreadsheet to keep track of what all the editions give you. I’ve said
many times before that two, maybe three is the maximum amount of editions your
game should have. No, the problem here is with the pre-orders.
I
shouldn’t need to plan out my pre-orders with the same accuracy and foresight
of Alexander Hamilton attacking Yorktown. While I’ve more or less stopped
pre-ordering after the No Man’s Sky incident
of August 2016, I still maintain it’s not a bad idea to pre-order something
with limited stock like an NES Classic or a game from a familiar franchise or a
trusted developer. Considering the major gaming sites’ highly praising reviews
for Horizon came out a couple of
weeks before the game’s launch this one was a pretty safe bet to pre-order, but
there are several other situations where this isn’t the case. For example,
Bethesda now refuses to send out review copies, barring sites like Kotaku, IGN and
The Jimquisition from giving early reviews for games just because they tried it
with Doom and people really liked
that game despite not having any early reviews to go off of. This means that
pre-orders for their games are now complete gambles.
The
other thing you have to worry about when pre-ordering is the dreaded
cancellation notice, as several Breath of
the Wild Master Edition early adopters were faced with last week.
Due
to a supply and demand issue (a Nintendo product having supply and demand
issues? Who’d have thought!?) Amazon cancelled over one thousand Zelda pre-orders for unlucky customers
who had to go seek out the already difficult to obtain collector’s edition
elsewhere.
This
is honestly par for the course for pre-ordering from Amazon, especially when
limited edition Nintendo products are considered. Remember the Majora’s Mask 3DS and the May 2015 line
of Smash Bros. amiibo? They always
overestimate how many people will want one, and when it turns out Nintendo
didn’t give them enough supply to meet the demand, a few hundred people get
shafted. Because Amazon is an online retailor unlike, say, Best Buy, they can’t
keep track of each individual pre-order in a computer system and order enough
stock to meet those who bought their games ahead of time. Instead, pre-ordering
from them is a roll of the dice, often resulting in all-nighters constantly
refreshing the page to be one of the first to nab the Special Edition before
it’s either sold out or Amazon’s notoriously weak servers go kerplooey.
The
dedication, planning and early wake-ups you need to pull off to grab a limited
edition of a game is not dissimilar to what you do when planning Disney World
vacation. And that’s just unfair to those who need to work or have families and
don’t have time to refresh pages at midnight or carefully map out pre-orders at
specific stores. This is made even worse by the threat of pre-order
cancellations, leaving consumers in limbo in hopes that some other store will
have the edition they want.
Honestly,
I want buying games to become the same as buying movies. When I got the 3D Blu-ray
edition of Doctor Strange, for
example, all I had to do is walk into Wal-Mart, head to the electronics section
and grab it off the shelf. No pre-orders, no late night grind, no threats of
cancellation. I found the movie and took it to the checkout. Easy as pie. I get
that limited editions are meant to be just that: “limited”. But that doesn’t
mean that I have to figure out where to pre-order or to get it at midnight just
to avoid risk of getting the boot by Amazon. When trying to sell something to
consumers, simplification is key. Making purchasing a special edition quick and
easy saves everyone from unnecessary headache.
Song
of the Week
Main Theme – Horizon: Zero Dawn
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