Re: I don't understand pre-orders. Do you preorder?

On Sat, 08 Feb 2025 19:26:08 +0000, ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) wrote:

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

    [I did some digging into my old Usenet comments; it turns out
     the game in question was "Grand Theft Auto 4". So that's one
     mystery sorted ;-) ]

Heh. I should had done that for Diablo 2 from my local EB store. It was
sold out! I had to wait a few days until it got restocked. I can't
remember if I finally bought it from EB or somewhere else though. My brain
is broken. :(

Although I'm sure it happened, I can't really remember a time I walked
into a store intending to get a Brand New Game only to find out it was
out of stock. I'm pretty sure though, that if and when it did happen,
I just shrugged and bought something else (and then came back next
week to get the game I was looking for).

Although when it comes right down to it, I can only remember ONCE
going to a store specifically looking for a brand new game... and that
dates back to April 1992.
                         
    [I won't mention the name of the game, but that date and my
     frequent mention of my love for the game --and its franchise--
     in earlier posts should let you figure out which title I'm
     talking about, if you care enough to work it out. ;-).]

                          And yes, I managed to buy this unnamed game
on my visit to the store. (And also, I seem to recall, a copy of
Windows 3.1 at the same time. I'm pretty sure I still have the floppy
disks for both, too).

The TL;DR is that I've never seen a need for pre-orders. The games I
wanted were either already available, or I'd just grab something else
in its place. Either way, pre-orders seemed a lot of extra effort for
no real gain.

And that was in an era when there was only limited shelf-space for
physical media games. With digital releases, I'll happily wait for
launch day before forking over my cash... or even several years after
;-)