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I go completely digital which of course does not require delivery time.

You have to download it… that counts as delivery time does it not? I can still run to my favorite game store, buy a disc, and be back way before a 50GB game is done downloading.

I can't. (Plus, I have to get in my car, drive 5 miles, park, go into a crowded mall, wait in line to pay, find my car, drive home 5 miles (in traffic, both ways), and then deal with swapping discs every time I want to change games. For digital downloads, I have to spend about 3 minutes navigating menus and pressing buttons, then I can swap my monitor back over to my computer and go back to work, and all that time I'd be sitting in traffic and depreciating the value of my car I can actually be MAKING money.

I'd be completely digital (when it's possible) even if pre-orders didn't exist, because they're 100000000% more convenient in my life, for the entire life of the game.

So, for you the delivery time is less. There's a lot of people with bad internet, and possibly even with caps, for whom digital distribution is not yet more convenient.

On PC I don't mind, since there will be cracks and interpreters and stuff years from now to aid in the play of digital games. But on consoles, I only trust a disc.

I go completely digital which of course does not require delivery time.

You have to download it… that counts as delivery time does it not? I can still run to my favorite game store, buy a disc, and be back way before a 50GB game is done downloading.

Not when I have the game preloaded and ready to launch the minute it goes live you can't.

Also, even with physical copies, you have to wait for the game to install from disk (about 15 minutes), and then install the now standard day-one patch. With preloading being a thing now, digital preorders may be the only way to be able to play a game as soon as it's released.

-Disciple

Sweet meme. That's super helpful.

Jokes, man. Jokes.

That game wasn't even really bad. It had the same sorts of dumb bugs that every Bethesda game has and is forgiven for, and it's honestly still ten times the game Fallout 4 is. As usual, the internet lost its mind over something dumb and it went viral, rather than anyone actually playing the game and judging from themselves.

While the inside-out faces and NPCs moonwalking at lightning speed across a room don't do much for immersion, I typically just laugh and move on. This game, however, was actually broken.

The game had two game-breaking bugs when I played through it two weeks ago. A few days after that post, it actually crashed to the dashboard while trying to load one of the last cutscenes of the game. That's all on top of the at least two dozen times that I had manually reload the last auto save because the game couldn't tell I was dead.

This game, while pretty and a lot of fun (when it isn't actively trying to make you stop playing), shouldn't have been released in it's current state. And while it may or may not have anything to do with their pre-order numbers, the game was released, not because it was ready to ship, but because people were ready to get paid.

-Disciple

According to VG chartz, which may or may not be accurate, Des2ny has about 1/4 the preorders of Destiny the same amount of time from launch.

Destiny Released Sept 9, 2013
VG Chatz Numbers as of July 27, 2013: 52,890 total preorders.

Destiny 2 Release Date Sept 6, 2017
VG Chatz Numbers as of July 17, 2017: 129,447 total preorders.

#codymilleryall

Did you bother to add up everything on every platform? There was a reddit thread regarding this. Destiny had over a million total, and Des2ny had 250K plus up to 18K for PC.

Your numbers are not correct. Check again. For one, you didn't add up all the platforms. 50k is like PS3 level. Destiny had over a million, and Des2ny has about 250K, plus up to 18K on PC.

Regarding digital sales. They do in fact estimate digital preorders, but even if why didn't it's still the same website. Unless there is a huge shift to digital preorders on the order of 300% over the past 3 years, the numbers are still helpful even if not exact. We are comparing relatively, not looking for an exact amount.

Was looking at numbers for wrong year...

Didn't we have this talk a while back about not counting digital sales? It seems hard to believe that D1 on the PS3 and 360 out preordered D2 in its entirety...

Why? The installed base of the previous generation at end-of-life would be expected to be several times larger than that of the next generation at its beginning.

I still got three extra days, and I enjoyed them. I know I'm buying the game. Unless the raid sucks (highly improbable), I know I'm going to get my money's worth (even buying special editions) compared to just about any other entertainment I could purchase for myself (except maybe used books).

I guess I understand the argument against preorders, but preorders represent a company's or game's stock in a sense. It encourages more investment in both, and I've yet to be convinced that pre-orders have contributed negatively to the quality of Bungie's games.

Except stock ownership confers benefits that preorders don't.

So pre-order bonuses aren't a thing?

I didn't say "stock ownership confers benefits AND preorders don't".

I said "stock ownership confers benefits THAT preorders don't".

Whether the preorder bonuses are worth the lost opportunity costs and the perverse incentives it creates is a separate argument.

When you invest in a thing, you get a negotiable asset that (hopefully) increases in value, and confers upon the owner certain other rights, such as voting rights, in certain conditions.

Preordering gives you bonuses plus the same thing everyone gets on launch day: the game.

Funding through Kickstarter or other platforms gives you bonuses (maybe) and the game (maybe) or quite possibly nothing at all.

You can, of course, invest your money and lose it, but that's because the thing you bought is no longer worth anything, not because you never received the thing you "bought".

I'm not talking about the direct benefits to those who preorder, although there are some. I'm saying preorders are a measure of the company's or game's value, which in turn affect the actual stock value and (one hopes) the ability of the company to maintain and attract the talent necessary to make the game good, which is one of preorder sales' indirect benefits to gamers.