Why Retailer-Specific Pre-Order Bonuses?

Lately a new trend has begun to pop up in the video game industry, and it’s not a positive trend according to many.

[BinkyStalls]

so people will buy it from their stores and make the company money, derp

[norman29]

^^^as above, more people go to that store and buy the game there = more money for that store/company i thought this would have been quite logical no? have something more/better than somewhere else so they buy from you. what a pointless 'opinion' piece.

[yog-sothot]

I hate these retailer exclusivities

This might be the worst thing this gen has brought us, even worse than the continuous patching of unfinished games

[killershadow117]

So you would prefer no patchs for unfinished games?
Nah, I'm kidding, but its hard sometimes to find every bug in a game and sometimes bugs don't pop up until gamers get the game. It has to do with it connecting to the internet or the way the game reads your hard drive.

[ASSASSYN 36o]

Sometimes the codes for retail exclusive are reusable. Two worlds two and operation flashpoint dragon rising have exclusive pre order codes and they are accessible by anyone no matter the games purchase source. So it isn't all bad nor suprising. Money is the goal not gamers opinion of the practice.

[Nate-Dog]

I find myself this sort of thing is a bit irritating. I can't even say how many different options you had for LittleBigPlanet (and LBP2) when deciding where to pre-order from. It's a bit of an odd choice, although the example used of the AC:B beta being an exclusive part of the pre-order to Gamestop (I wouldn't know, in the UK) was a good one especially since you can guess how much money GS got from the people that otherwise wouldn't have pre-ordered from them.

There are so many different editions to games nowadays. Standard, "collectors", "limited" (which rarely is limited), "special", and then other editions (like with AC:B the "codex" edition, among others). I mean I like special editions and whatnot as much as the next guy when we're not getting ripped off (I'm looking at you EU LBP2 collectors edition) but do we really need all of these editions? I like some special editions but it was much easier when we just had the old simple style of the standard version of a game which had all you need.

[DOMination]

As long as they go on the marketplace after a while I don't have a problem with these

[MaverickStar7]

This trend is really starting to get out of hand. The publisher sells more if more people reserve the game regardless of what store they go to. They just get extra money for the exclusive items. The stores fight each other over the reserves, but in the end they all win. The gamers have to make a choice over which deal they want. Sometimes these extra items are unlockable in game or make it to the marketplace. But I know of many that are never available ever after the ship date. In the end, the gamers get the short end of the stick. How about stores save the money on paying for the exclusives and offer a pre-order discount instead.