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A couple months back when Dragon Age was nearing release I decided to head to the local GameStop and plunk down some money on a preorder. Shortly before I left, I went online to the store's website to check if there were any deals available. Assuming that Gamestop would be the only store with a preorder bonus I simply googled "dragon age preorder".
Upon hitting the Search button, a tidal wave of preorder offers came flooding over me. I could go to GameStop if I wanted one item. Amazon was offering a different item and $10 off with next day shipping. Steam was had a completely different item as well, plus their games can be preloaded for an even easier distribution.
I briefly scanned over the items then found there was a collectors edition available as well. The offers and items for the CE were even more overwhelming than the standard edition. If I were to order from Steam I would get more items, some different than other offers. I could get more of the DLC free, and a couple other additions. The instore hard copy came with a map instead of some of the things offered in the Steam edition. Then the EA Store popped its head into my search, telling me what I would get if I purchased the game from them.
So at this point I could go to GameStop, Steam, EA Store, or Amazon for a variety of offers and within those outlets I had a choice from cloth maps to rings to cloth wolf boots. Not to mention the choice to have a hard or digital copy of the game or an art book. And then there was the concern if I purchase DA:O on PC then buy Mass Effect 2 on XBox, does the armor cross between platforms? Oh and not forgetting the toolset, only on the PC version.
At this point I had to call a mental time out and step back. Now as an avid gamer and consumer I was able to make a choice pretty quickly and easily but thinking of an average Joe gamer or possibly a non-gamer parent wanting to buy the game as a gift this could all become extremely confusing.
Where did this pre-order proliferation come from? Was this planned by the publisher to offer choices to their consumers? or did each of the retail outlets demand their own form of unique giveaway? Could this also be an attempt to keep brick and mortar stores alive with promises of different items than the digital distributors?
Now Dragon Age is, by far, not the first game to have uniqe offers with many stores but it definitely seems to be one of the first to nearly flood the market with a nearly over abundance of unique items and offers.
I'm not sure if the overflow was a good thing for the market or not, or even if the amount or variation of offers really influenced consumer's decisions. But I hope that in the future retailers and publishers can streamline the offers for a more consumer friendly experience.
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As for why the different exclusives, that's probably a matter of platform/stores demanding something 'neat' in order to increase traffic to their particular store that no other store has. Exclusives are pretty valuable, after all.
Like you though I'm not sure if it's good, bad, working or not. For me personally though I either end up not carrying, interested but not particularly swayed to pre-order, or grumpy because I want a mish-mash of different bonuses.
If something I'd be willing to pay for is only available on a platform or through a channel I don't use (whether due to cost, convenience, or any other reason), then that's money left on the table. As a PC gamer, I'd buy Uncharted 2 (for example), but because it's exclusive to the PS3 and I'm not about to buy a PS3 just to play one game, that game's publishers will never see my money. Similarly, suppose I didn't like Steam, or didn't want to reward someone like GameStop who's basically stopped selling PC games -- making something I want exclusive to that channel is only going to annoy and frustrate me. I'm less likely to want to do business with that game's publisher in the future.
Why do gamers tolerate this? Why do game publishers think it's a good idea?
And what about game creators, whose work sees an arbitrarily restricted audience? If music isn't exclusively playable on certain types of CD players, and the vast majority of books aren't exclusively sold by Amazon or Barnes & Noble, why in the world should anyone think that exclusivity of content is desirable for computer games?
I do think, though, that the exclusiveness of items or games per platform is something that the console companies are driving. Microsoft wants you to play their games because the are the only platform with game X, likewise with Sony. Unfortunatly there is no large voice for the PC gamers like there are for the consoles. Unless the war of the consoles ends I dont ever see an end of exclusive titles, maybe just more "timed exclusive" titles. Sorry Bart
As for why, that's a good question, Bart. Some part of me thinks it's to inflate and encourge pre-orders and get people to buy something they would not otherwise have in general. A game with pre-order bonuses may seem more appealing than one without; consequentially, a game with massive bonuses may seem to be that much more appealing than one with 'only' great bonuses. Even if said buyer buys the game and plays it for only a few hours before forgetting about it (and the pre order bonus), it's still one more sale.
It may also be a part of a greater cultural momentum in the industry/gaming culture. The Big Hit mentality currently running rampant in the industry (developers and gamers alike, mainstream anyway) where you get 6 months before release and one month after to generate a big hit before everyone moves on to the next Big Hit means everyone tries to make a huge splash before they get swallowed and forgotten. Games, perhaps it is felt, need to attract a gamer's attention which is being ever more divided.
Another prong may be the gaming media itself (or at least, the mechanism that feeds and fuels it). When Batman Arkham Asylum and Modern Warfare 2 announced their pre-order bonuses (life size batarang, night vision goggles respectively) those got as much press as any preview. In part, perhaps, because they were glamourous bonuses; in part, perhaps, because they were bonuses at all. Compare to Borderlands and Sims 3 World Adventures (equally big name releases to varying degrees). Borderlands had no bonus and subsequently, less press (if I remember, hands on previews were generally a non-featured item with exclusives or first looks as the featured item on media outlets).
The Sims expansion, on the other hand, had exclusives - you got a couple of free sets (about 10-20 or so pieces of doors/windows/furniture) off the website and buying the expansion netted you 2000 Sim points (ten or more bucks worth, worth about 2 mega-sets off the Sims store). Less 'glamourous' but perhaps a lot more worthwhile (ignoring the whole microtransaction thing at the moment). The pre-order stuff on this got a few paragraphs worth on most sites.