The Movies Pre-Order Bonus

StarMaker Allows Early Character Creation

from Stardock Forums
Peter Molyneux's upcoming sim The Movies has just become a little more enticing. The game which is due out in a few months now comes with a pre-order bonus that will enable players to get a head start on their character design. Activision has announced that the application dubbed StarMaker will allow users to design a character that can later be imported into the sim. StarMaker will allow players to alter a character's face, age, weight and even allow a blending of different faces. Currently, StarMaker is only offered with a pre-order from Best Buy but other retailers including Amazon and EBGames will also begin handing out the pre-order bonus in the near future.

Source: Best Buy Product Page
345 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Preorders are bad business, avoid them.

1) They lock you into HIGHER pricing. (Generally full retail).
2) They lock vendors into holding their price high so they aren't pricematching.

For example Chaos Theory was preselling for $50.. The day it launched, CompUSA was selling it for $29 while everyone else was locked into $50 for a month so they weren't forced to pricematch. Anyone that preordered got screwed.

Also, preordered content generally always appears on the internet as a free download (bonus maps, bonus characters, etc).
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
No, pre-orders are good business, they're just not always the best for consumers - which is a personal choice gamers have to make.
Elemental: Reforged
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Personally I have no issue with preorders. If I really want a game, I want it on release and the only way to do that sometimes is to preorder. Game prices take a while to drop too, and if it's a really good game the price will stay high for a VERY long time, and used copies will be hard to come by.

Look at Doom 3 for example, game has been out a year and it's still almost $50. Mario Kart Double Dash for the Game Cube has been out for almost 3 years and it still retailing at $50 new, only $45 used. If its a good game, the price will stay high for a long time regardless of preorders etc.

Also, vendors pricematch pretty closely across the board. No retailer wants to be the one with the highest regular rate on a game, because in any town where there's a Best Buy, there's gotta be a WalMart and an EBGames. If one is regularly too high, everyone will go to the cheaper stores. Preorders don't impact this practice. I'm pretty sure they all post new games at the same rates (sometimes lower because they try and run a sale or special).