True, but "install base" can be a misleading number. By the time D1 came along, I had purchased at least 4 Xbox 360s, all of which count towards that platform's install base. And yet I hadn't bought a 360 game in over a year, because I ALSO had an Xbox One and a PS4.

Launch of the Original Xbox. First guy to get one also buys two copies of Halo. Bungie jokes :"Halo has a 200% attach rate!"

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.

True, but "install base" can be a misleading number. By the time D1 came along, I had purchased at least 4 Xbox 360s, all of which count towards that platform's install base. And yet I hadn't bought a 360 game in over a year, because I ALSO had an Xbox One and a PS4.

For this and other reasons, "install base" needs to be judged on a sliding scale. Video game consoles towards the end of their lifespan (ie already eclipsed by newer hardware) do not typically see a great ratio of sales per new release.

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.

(Sad to hear you won't be back in time.)

My adventures the last few days have helped ease the pain.

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 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?

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.

That's also my main beef with the otherwise very useful crowdfunding sites-- they are vehicles for investment without return and without regulation.

since nothing has changed in their methodology over 3 years.

Uh, you don't see that as a problem, given that digital pre-orders are increasingly common in the industry, but VG Chartzzzz doesn't account for them?

Where does it say they don't? Their methodology would indicate they do somewhat through consumer polls.

Even if it were true that they don't account for anything digital, neither would their Destiny 1 numbers. Apples to Apples. If you want to make the argument that the percentage of preorders that are now digital is some huge amount higher than three years ago, that is a conversation to have, but it would require some kind of data. I will grant that the numbers of digital pre-order very well could be higher, but is it 300% higher?

Well... (Trend over the last six years)

It's hard to overstate what a seismic shift this has been for the industry. The US game market has completely flipped in just six years from one that was about two-thirds physical to one that's about three-quarters digital. On a percentage basis, physical game sales today are a smaller share of the market than digital game sales were at the beginning of the decade. On a dollar-for-dollar basis, physical sales have fallen by nearly 50 percent in six years, while digital sales have increased threefold.

Also... (2016 vs 2017)

Sales to PCs rose 34 percent, while revenue from games downloaded to consoles like Microsoft's Xbox and Sony's PlayStation jumped 32 percent year over year.

"The shift to digital for the console market shows no signs of a slowdown, particularly in the U.S. where the segment rose 43 percent," SuperData said in a report.

since nothing has changed in their methodology over 3 years.

Uh, you don't see that as a problem, given that digital pre-orders are increasingly common in the industry, but VG Chartzzzz doesn't account for them?

Where does it say they don't? Their methodology would indicate they do somewhat through consumer polls.

Even if it were true that they don't account for anything digital, neither would their Destiny 1 numbers. Apples to Apples. If you want to make the argument that the percentage of preorders that are now digital is some huge amount higher than three years ago, that is a conversation to have, but it would require some kind of data. I will grant that the numbers of digital pre-order very well could be higher, but is it 300% higher?

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

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.

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

since nothing has changed in their methodology over 3 years.

Uh, you don't see that as a problem, given that digital pre-orders are increasingly common in the industry, but VG Chartzzzz doesn't account for them? By tracking physical pre-orders nowadays, all you could potentially surmise is the general market share that a title has for each platform. And even that is probably super rough, statistically.

Edit: This same thing is happening in music. It's like saying that the music industry has imploded because you're only paying attention to CD sales and ignoring subscription services. The problem with digital pre-orders is that there's no middle man to use as a data source. The digital video games market is effectively operating in a black box, and retailers aren't going to disclose their internal numbers.

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

In any case, I've yet to see any proof that preorders had anything to do with pushing that game out the door. I'm not saying preordering is a smart decision, I'm just saying preorders are not responsible or even really all that relevant to bad games.

https://www.quora.com/unanswered/Are-there-any-examples-of-successful-companies-who-have-used-a-Z-instead-of-an-S-in-...

Starz, Inc.

And while it's a brand, not a company, Silly Bandz is/was hugely profitable...

"In fact, and please do not take this as fact..."

I laughed at this one.