Kintaro said:
They will sell this crap to you later on. No question. Or you can just simply pre-order. Or don't. I see two things. I see retailers flexing their muscles wanting extra incentives in exchange for extra promotion of the product and companies desperately wanting that exposure to sell these games. The bonuses get people hyped and excited for the games.
More importantly, if this shit didn't work? They wouldn't do it.
That's exactly it, the retailers are pushing for in-game awards for pre-order, Insomniac cleared this up once they announced their pre-order bonuses. They also stated that the in-game bonuses are going to be available even if you don't pre-order.
The thing is, if you announce multiple bonuses from the different stores, you pretty much know that the gamer will eventually have to go and pick one unless they go out and pre-order then cancel, which doesn't really help the retailers at all.
The other thing is, these promotional items are usually not all over the world. I haven't seen any GameCrazy stores here in Canada.
Wolverine Pre-Order is now available.
Dead Space Pre-Order is now available.
Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm Pre-Order is now available.
Then again I believe the developers themselves want to push the pre-order bonuses, seeing as how that's where they make a good chunk of the money they invested in at the full price. It also helps with marketing somewhat since there's usually a sign in the store that they feature the exclusive content.
There's quite a few little bits and pieces, it's not as simple as it appears, but people tend to hate on things that doesn't necessarily suit them perfectly. I'm not a huge fan of pre-ordering but there are certainly a few games that deserve it.
