Why Pre Orders are Bullshit

Pre Orders are bullshit. Plain and simple. But I probably better explain. First I shall cover my ass by saying yes pre ordering can be a good option sometimes but not very often. In fact extremely rarely. Here's some examples:

The example though that will best illustrate the bullshit is recently released fantastic game: Transformers War for Cybertron. The game had three exclusive multiplayer skins for Jazz, Demolisher and worst of fucking all Soundwave. Yes one of the badass Transformers is only for the people who decided to buy the game months ago. Soundwave should have been unlocked once you reached the top rank as way of showing how badass you are. But don't worry if you forgot to pre order kids. The codes are now available on eBay. Just be prepared to suffer for this as you didn't throw early money of the Activision pile. Soundwave goes for $30, Jazz $50 and Demolisher $105!!!! Yes for nearly twice the game's price you can play as Demolisher.

But wait that's not true because if your the idiot who actually bought Demolisher for a couple of weeks allowance, prepared to look like a retard as guess what (and you should of seen this fucking coming) all three are available soon for an unknown price. Them and two other characters...and two new maps... and two new Escalation maps. While the price is unknown it will certainly be less than all three of the eBay prices and you get more content. And this is the thing, you give the publisher money early just so you can be one of few with a skin online only to lose this two weeks later when all pre order bonuses are put for download any way. It's not like pre ordering has a bonus to it to really after all considering it's not like the store will not buy a ton of copies of Mass Effect 2 or Red Dead Redemption (not in good stores anyway because I have heard of store not buying stock due to lack of pre order).

But this is also the developer holding content back and actually having the pre order stuff exclusive. One good example would be Assassin's Creed II. First off Assassin's Creed II is stuffed more with good content then the turkey for the UN's Thanksgiving party but looking at the pre order bonus: one thing pokes out besides awesome trophies of Ezio and that's exclusive missions in awesome sounding locations like a Venezian shipyard and others. These I have never played thanks to the problem Ubisoft didn't releases them in a mission pack weeks or months later. I want to play more of this game and I want to play them too but Ubisoft wants to keep their promise of exclusivity so shit. I'm a paying customer for gods sake (Editorial Note: The mentioned area was thanks to further research  released in The Bonfire of the Vanities, so while ASCII may be off the hook other games have and will do this in the future).

Finally I'd like to comment on another bullshit practice where the publisher not only withholds content but also spreads itself like a sitcom where the main character agrees to take two girls to the prom. For this example time to pull out Fallout New Vegas. Fallout New Vegas has diffrent pre order bonuses depending if you shop from Wal Mart, Steam, Gamespot, EB Games, Best Buy and Amazon. Four completely diffrent packs of armor, items and equipment. Each of the packs have completely diffrent content so I will tear only one of them due to time constraints but let me first say they are similar in content. The Classic Pack available from GameStop & EB Games and it comes with the Armored Vault 13 Suit, Vault 13 Canteen, Weathered 10mm Pistol, 5 Stimpaks. First off 5 Stimpaks is a shit idea considering I guarantee those will be gone within half an hour and I'll have more than that without them in an hour. A Canteen for dehydration is stupid because dehydration is only a problem in Hardcore Mode which most people won't play because their not PC gamers who are the true hardcore. The armor is really just a sendoff to the old school games which is great but the armor itself will be only minorly above the norm. Finally the weathered pistol which is probably above the starter pistol but considering I'll have a rifle within the first hour why the hell do I need it.

To sum it up this pack is worthless and spreading just alienates the consumer from the content for two weeks where you will promptly charge us four bucks for each pack. And that's bullshit.