Steam's Pre-order Kick

[Invadergray]

I kind of understand the logic behind pre-ordering. It gives companies early sales projections as well as guaranteed money before a product even launches, and the consumer not only is assured their copy of the game upon release, but may get a little bonus costume or side mission for no extra charge. But as we've seen in recent years, particularly when it comes to Gamestop, pre-order frenzy can have its dark side.
So what does this have to do with Steam? Steam has always had pre-ordering and never really fussed about it, but lately I've been noticing a large increase in recommendations of games that haven't been released yet. When I launch the store, the first several items I see are "pre-purchase Hitman, pre-purchase Torchlight II, etc." It hasn't gotten to the prompt-at-checkout level yet but I'm worried that this may be an omen for future business to come. I certainly hope not, Valve is pretty level-headed about digital business, but it may be worth watching.

Follow up thought: Is it a bad sign that the industry is placing more and more importance on pre-order sales? I mean it seems that after launch, a game doesn't even matter anymore (in a business sense). Is that bad, or just the nature of the industry?

 

[MammothBlade]

It's partly about getting a guaranteed income before peoples' opinions are influenced by reviews. And then it's about meeting demand efficiently - when it comes to physical retail, it's good to be able to order at least enough copies for people who will definitely buy the game, whilst pre-loading tries to ease the massive strain on servers + lag that will inevitably come if thousands of people download a huge game at the same time.

It's probably not a bad thing - I just wish all pre-order bonuses could be acquired after as an added extra.

But yes, games should receive full support for a good timespan, you can't just cash in pre-order sales and merrily give gamers your middle finger. Part of it is about peoples' attention spans I guess.

 

[Loop Stricken]

I think Steam needs to offer a free TF2 hat with every pre-order it advertises.

 

[distortedreality]

They may also be trying to cut down on server destruction for big game releases as their service gets more and more popular.

 

[TeletubbiesGolfGun]

i think it's partially to make sure they have enough activation keys available, there have been numerous times on steam sales where they literally run out because so many damn people buy the game in a short period of time, and pre ordering definitely helps them figure that part out.

(more reasons to it, not necessarily good or bad, just saiyan)

 

[CannibalCorpses]

The reason they like pre-orders is because they earn interest on your cash before providing you with what you've paid for. In essence you are paying more than full price for the game. It's only a pittance to you but multiply that by fuck loads and the sum is not insignificant. Better in their bank than yours (from their perspective of course).

Also, once you've paid for the game there is no incentive on their parts to try to persuade you to buy it. Less advertising costs, less development costs, less logistical costs (especially with digital downloads). You become worthless to them and they have no reason to try and make things better for you to part cash for. Once everyone has pre-ordered it they can chop some of the game out and release it as DLC later to further milk your wallet without doing anything.

This may be an extremely negative viewpoint but i do believe at some level it is true.

 

[TeletubbiesGolfGun]

Preorders make developers lazy, plain and simple. There is absolutely no reason to preorder any game, and no you dont need that cheat gun that tears through everything in the beginning (seriously this shit has always baffled me, why unbalance your game that you paid money for with cheats the very second you boot the thing up? retarded), you dont need that shitty figurine thats made from shitty malaysian plastic and probably'll give you asbestos poisoning if you hold it for more than 10 seconds, all this shit is not worth giving the developers a pass on quality, they need to be hungry for sales while making the game and all preorders do is fuck that whole process to shit

or it get's me the game for cheaper?

spent 46 on borderlands for the premiere club edition.

you were saying?

 

[TeletubbiesGolfGun]

The reason they like pre-orders is because they earn interest on your cash before providing you with what you've paid for. In essence you are paying more than full price for the game. It's only a pittance to you but multiply that by fuck loads and the sum is not insignificant. Better in their bank than yours (from their perspective of course).

Also, once you've paid for the game there is no incentive on their parts to try to persuade you to buy it. Less advertising costs, less development costs, less logistical costs (especially with digital downloads). You become worthless to them and they have no reason to try and make things better for you to part cash for. Once everyone has pre-ordered it they can chop some of the game out and release it as DLC later to further milk your wallet without doing anything.

This may be an extremely negative viewpoint but i do believe at some level it is true.

while that's an interesting point about the interest, i've never been charged until they are either shipping the game to me or the day of, so at least from the ones i've done, they aren't building any interest on it.

 

[Fiad]

Preorders make developers lazy, plain and simple. There is absolutely no reason to preorder any game, and no you dont need that cheat gun that tears through everything in the beginning (seriously this shit has always baffled me, why unbalance your game that you paid money for with cheats the very second you boot the thing up? retarded), you dont need that shitty figurine thats made from shitty malaysian plastic and probably'll give you asbestos poisoning if you hold it for more than 10 seconds, all this shit is not worth giving the developers a pass on quality, they need to be hungry for sales while making the game and all preorders do is fuck that whole process to shit

I only pre-order if I know a game will be one I enjoy. The only time I let a hyped game get a pre-order from me and ended in disappointment was Prototype. Other than that I have only pre-ordered a few games. Borderlands 2, Skyrim, Halo 4, Halo: Anniversary, Halo: Reach, L4D2. All by devs that I know release quality games time and time again.

As for the cheat weapons and such as you put them, most of the time those really aren't that good. Take the ones that you got for Borderlands 2 for example, I quite literally swapped it out for the second gun I came across.

And as for the figures and such. People like to have nick-knacks sitting on shelves, plus there are laws in place to make sure you don't get poisoned from the materials.

 

[idarkphoenixi]

Pre-orders are mostly all about getting a purchase before reviews can come out. That's why they make all these little offers for people who put down a pre-order.

It's nothing new and certainly nothing new to Steam. The industry will probably lean even more toward pre-ordering games but I don't see anything really bad happening as a direct result.

 

[l0ckd0wn]

@OP

Steam has had prereleases for as long as I've been a member (04?). I have to say that as their developer catalog has increased, so have the amount of prereleases, but I'm more inclined to think the influx in pre-release pushing now is that Steam has already had a relationship with said developers and is now in the position to tap the market effectively. If we went back 8 or even 5 years ago, there were less games and less developers on Steam, so only those that were already signed on to Steam would have Prereleases.

 

[CannibalCorpses]

The reason they like pre-orders is because they earn interest on your cash before providing you with what you've paid for. In essence you are paying more than full price for the game. It's only a pittance to you but multiply that by fuck loads and the sum is not insignificant. Better in their bank than yours (from their perspective of course).

Also, once you've paid for the game there is no incentive on their parts to try to persuade you to buy it. Less advertising costs, less development costs, less logistical costs (especially with digital downloads). You become worthless to them and they have no reason to try and make things better for you to part cash for. Once everyone has pre-ordered it they can chop some of the game out and release it as DLC later to further milk your wallet without doing anything.

This may be an extremely negative viewpoint but i do believe at some level it is true.

while that's an interesting point about the interest, i've never been charged until they are either shipping the game to me or the day of, so at least from the ones i've done, they aren't building any interest on it.

I only have experience of pre-ordering in store and i have always paid up front (always being twice until i considered the point i made). It might not be as valid anymore with digital sales but there could be credit and investor implications to have a few million quids worth of pre-order sales sat on your books, if not already in your bank account.

 

[Mr Binary]

Now that you mention it, I actually have noticed a lot of those pre-orders popping up lately on the main Steam store. I don't really see a problem with pushing pre-orders a little more, but I also don't think that should stop advertising a game once it is released. I don't often see commercials or any ads for a game once released, not that I'm complaining... it just doesn't seem like a good business idea.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Does anyone know how the "spotlight bar" and ads actually work on Steam? I've come to believe (entirely without any evidence, I'll admit) that producers pay Valve to have their games in the spotlight. If that's the case it makes complete sense that the larger producers pay to have their unreleased games in the spotlight to try and get as many pre-orders as possible. I mean, it is probably one of the best advertising spaces you can get for a game producer in that you will cover a large part of your potential customer base and I doubt Valve are kind/stupid enough to put other people's games there out of pure generosity.

 

[Vigormortis]

I only have experience of pre-ordering in store and i have always paid up front (always being twice until i considered the point i made). It might not be as valid anymore with digital sales but there could be credit and investor implications to have a few million quids worth of pre-order sales sat on your books, if not already in your bank account.

In the case of digital, like with Steam, it's usually one of two cases.

Either the money is "queued" up, waiting for the titles release before officially being charged to your account, or it's charged immediately and sent directly to the developer/publisher. (minus the 20~30% Steam cut)

The latter is, at times, used by some devs to help cover some extraneous development costs that they would normally not have been able to pay. It's not always the case, of course, but some devs have used those types of pre-orders to actually add features to the final product.

The other thing is, in most cases, the pre-orders on digital platforms are either the exact same price as the final version or a certain percentage less. I've yet to really see any that actually charge more. (something retail chains, like Gamestop, often do)

 

[Jason Rayes]

I think part of it is demand. The majority of my friends preorder games they want, so if that's the case just amongst my circle, I assume its likely to be similar in the wider community. Lots of people preordering, means companies are more likely advertise that their games are at a preorder stage.

As far as I know preordering has no effect on a companies support of the product. There are always going to be post release sales for those customers that didn't preorder and if your product is a buggy unsupported piece of crap word will soon spread and you will lose those sales. Seems like bad business to me.