Starfield

There's no upside to pre-ordering this, why on Earth would you? There are plenty of downsides as others have pointed out already.
 
since the game is being bundled with select AMD CPU's I'm going to buy it from someone selling the code online...I have an Nvidia GPU and AMD CPU but was able to buy and activate recent AMD gaming bundle promotions (I bought the codes for Jedi: Survivor and Last of Us Part 1 PC for $25 each)
 
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polonyc2 said:
since the game is being bundled with select AMD CPU's I'm going to buy it from someone selling the code online...I have an Nvidia GPU and AMD CPU but was able to buy and activate recent AMD gaming bundle promotions (I bought the codes for Jedi: Survivor and Last of Us Part 1 PC for $25 each)
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This is how I bought most of my games before they added hardware verification. What a bummer.
 
TaintedSquirrel said:
This is how I bought most of my games before they added hardware verification. What a bummer.
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you can still get around it...that's how I activated Jedi: Survivor and Last of Us...you just need the seller to activate using your AMD Rewards account (change the password first)
 
Flogger23m said:
He did say prioritize. So for him that might be 60 or 80 frame rates. For some people they might want a minimum of 120, or 140. I doubt he enjoys playing at 30 or less frame rates.
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Myself, I'm happy averaging 70-80 FPS, but I don't stress over the details. If the game is playing smoothly then that is enough for me. I've been following this "rule" since getting my first G-SYNC monitor. That's the nice thing about always buying the top GPU: You can generally turn up all the details to their highest setting and forget about it.
 
M76 said:
The idea that games would be bug free if only nobody pre-ordered them is ludicrous. If I already decided I want to play the game, whether I buy it before or after launch won't affect how buggy it is.
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While I mostly agree with you, pre-orders may incentivize putting more effort into the marketing. The money for that isn't made out of thin air. It needs to come from some place else, meaning the budget for development could be shifted more toward marketing. If the publisher can consistently sell through 6+ million copies before the game actually releases, why would they care if it is in a good state or not?
 
KazeoHin said:
Pre-Ordering is literally, not figuratively or hypothetically, but literally giving money to the publisher to tell them that their marketing team is more profitable than their developers.
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No, when you pre-order a game it just means you want to play the type of game they are making and that you trust the developers enough to think the game will be good. Nothing else. If nobody pre-ordered starfield that would send the message that people are not interested we need to change the direction of the game or rush it out to cut losses.
KazeoHin said:
when you pre-order a game, you're giving the publisher money for NOTHING, except entertaining you with their marketing campaign.
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That doesn't even make any sense, you get the exact same game whether you buy it now or days after the launch.
KazeoHin said:
That's why pre-order incentives and advertising is getting more grandiose and games themselves are getting more buggy and unfinished.
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Games being buggy has nothing to do with pre-orders. Pre orders existed for decades, but only now they are starting to affect game quality?
What did change is the complexity of games however making it less likely for them to be bug free (no, they weren't bug free in the old times either, take off your rose colored nostalgia glasses)

KazeoHin said:
Microsoft also Wanted Halo Infinite to be amazing.
Microsoft also Wanted Redfall to be amazing
Microsoft also wanted Sea Of Thieves to be amazing
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All of those games had giant red flags, which is why I gave them a wide berth. If you are not sure a game will be worth your money then don't pre-order it. That is common sense. But please allow me to spend my money as I plesae on games I absolutely don't want to miss, that I'm confident will offer a great experience even if they have some initial hickups.
KazeoHin said:
guess what? All of these games made budget based on Pre-orders alone, time and time-again people let publishers essentially cash-out early before finishing their games. Why would they? you've told them they don't need to.
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And all of them got absolutely destroyed in reviews and user feedback completely killing any additional revenue. Investors don't just want to reach ROI, they want to make money, and a good game makes much more money than a crap one. Just barely reaching ROI churning out crap might be a good business model for asylum films, but not for an MS sized publisher.
 
Armenius said:
While I mostly agree with you, pre-orders may incentivize putting more effort into the marketing. The money for that isn't made out of thin air. It needs to come from some place else, meaning the budget for development could be shifted more toward marketing. If the publisher can consistently sell through 6+ million copies before the game actually releases, why would they care if it is in a good state or not?
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The marketing budget doesn't actually comes out of the development budget. It is on top of it. It's not like MS says to bethesda here is 200 million dollars, you decide how much of that is spent on development and marketing.
They care about release state because it affects any additional sales. Why settle for 6 million copies when you can sell through 10 with a bit more effort? It is leaving money on the table. If you always cash out when you are even you never win anything.
 
M76 said:
Why settle for 6 million copies when you can sell through 10 with a bit more effort?
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You can only release so much crap b4 you don't sell any games anymore so it is in their best interest to ship the game as good as possible and fix things or they don't need to make another one anymore.
 
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GoldenTiger said:
There's no upside to pre-ordering this, why on Earth would you? There are plenty of downsides as others have pointed out already.
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In some countries using and paying off a credit card can be a long, time consuming task (for eg. lining up for an hour+ at a bank, having to take time off from work etc), so it makes sense to do your purchasing in batches. About a decade ago I was abroad and decided to pre-order some Steam games simultaneously, in that country it was a massive time saving measure rather than waiting on their individual release dates.
 
Armenius said:
Myself, I'm happy averaging 70-80 FPS, but I don't stress over the details. If the game is playing smoothly then that is enough for me. I've been following this "rule" since getting my first G-SYNC monitor. That's the nice thing about always buying the top GPU: You can generally turn up all the details to their highest setting and forget about it.
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Maybe I have some odd setting on my monitor, but I can easily tell if something is around 70 or lower. 90 tends to be good enough, I will settle for 80. But 120 is so much nicer than 80-90, IMO.
 
M76 said:
The idea that games would be bug free if only nobody pre-ordered them is ludicrous. If I already decided I want to play the game, whether I buy it before or after launch won't affect how buggy it is.
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The idea is not to give your money for shit products, thereby perpetuating the creation of same, only vetted ones.
 
Drexion said:
In some countries using and paying off a credit card can be a long, time consuming task (for eg. lining up for an hour+ at a bank, having to take time off from work etc), so it makes sense to do your purchasing in batches. About a decade ago I was abroad and decided to pre-order some Steam games simultaneously, in that country it was a massive time saving measure rather than waiting on their individual release dates.
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I was speaking of first world countries, given this is an American site :). I don't know how it works elsewhere but that's a completely different circumstance.
 
if publishers wan't to encourage pre-orders they should offer some value such as a nice pre-order discount or some valuable in-game content...you gain almost nothing by pre-ordering a game nowadays
 
Meeho said:
The idea is not to give your money for shit products, thereby perpetuating the creation of same, only vetted ones.
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There is a ton of garbage out there like 90 percent of stuff on Steam should if never have been developed or published. At least people know most of the stuff is bad out there. The problem with down voting stuff like all of it the good stuff gets squashed as well.
 
M76 said:
The idea that games would be bug free if only nobody pre-ordered them is ludicrous. If I already decided I want to play the game, whether I buy it before or after launch won't affect how buggy it is.
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Well obviously if people decide to buy a buggy game, knowing it is buggy, why would games be bug free ?
 
Meeho said:
The idea is not to give your money for shit products, thereby perpetuating the creation of same, only vetted ones.
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I already know enough that I want to play this game, why would I need more vetting? You see I don't believe Starfield will be a shit product, but I also don't expect it to be perfect on September 6th. They might as well call it an open beta date I bet most people who pre-ordered would still happily pay knowing that. People pay for jpegs of nonexistent content in nonexistent games, and your problem is pre-paying for a product that will absolutely be a product no doubt about it?
LukeTbk said:
Well obviously if people decide to buy a buggy game, knowing it is buggy, why would games be bug free ?
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I don't buy games based on if they are buggy or not. A game can be absolutely certified bug free, I'd still not buy it if I wasn't already interested in it. And I'm also not going to skip a game that I waited on for years and excited for just because someone on the internet says it is buggy. Or even if it is everyone. I'd have missed out on a bunch good games that I really enjoyed if I trusted what other people say about them. I've learned to trust my spidey senses instead of the internet consensus. And I can quite accurately predict if a game has potential for me or not. And sure it is not a perfect system but a hell of a lot better than waiting for other people to tell me what to buy.

Why would games be bug free? They will never be completely bug free, as they'll never be perfect, there is always room for improvement somewhere. It might seem like it sometimes but developers aren't deliberately seeking bad launches, because it gives them a bad rep if they continue to release broken game after broken game. The stans might buy their next game, but they'll attract no new money that is for sure. And in investment land it is always about growth. So you see, they have a vested interest in making games that are well received. If they release nothing but broken games that they abandon without fixing the players will leave, but not instantly, and not all of them at once.
 
polonyc2 said:
if publishers wan't to encourage pre-orders they should offer some value such as a nice pre-order discount or some valuable in-game content...you gain almost nothing by pre-ordering a game nowadays
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Pre order content exists in most games and usually they are meaningless cosmetic items that are completely useless after about level 3.
The pre-order bonus content for Strafield is the "Old Mars Skin Pack" whatever that means.
 
M76 said:
I already know enough that I want to play this game, why would I need more vetting? You see I don't believe Starfield will be a shit product, but I also don't expect it to be perfect on September 6th. They might as well call it an open beta date I bet most people who pre-ordered would still happily pay knowing that. People pay for jpegs of nonexistent content in nonexistent games, and your problem is pre-paying for a product that will absolutely be a product no doubt about it?

I don't buy games based on if they are buggy or not. A game can be absolutely certified bug free, I'd still not buy it if I wasn't already interested in it. And I'm also not going to skip a game that I waited on for years and excited for just because someone on the internet says it is buggy. Or even if it is everyone. I'd have missed out on a bunch good games that I really enjoyed if I trusted what other people say about them. I've learned to trust my spidey senses instead of the internet consensus. And I can quite accurately predict if a game has potential for me or not. And sure it is not a perfect system but a hell of a lot better than waiting for other people to tell me what to buy.

Why would games be bug free? They will never be completely bug free, as they'll never be perfect, there is always room for improvement somewhere. It might seem like it sometimes but developers aren't deliberately seeking bad launches, because it gives them a bad rep if they continue to release broken game after broken game. The stans might buy their next game, but they'll attract no new money that is for sure. And in investment land it is always about growth. So you see, they have a vested interest in making games that are well received. If they release nothing but broken games that they abandon without fixing the players will leave, but not instantly, and not all of them at once.
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That is great and all that but what does pre-ordering get you? Unless you're getting a good pre-order discount it is kind of pointless. I know I've pre-ordered just because it would be cheaper than waiting day 1, but I seldom do it. Price aside there is really no advantage and I seldom can play exactly on day 1 anyways.
 
Flogger23m said:
That is great and all that but what does pre-ordering get you? Unless you're getting a good pre-order discount it is kind of pointless. I know I've pre-ordered just because it would be cheaper than waiting day 1, but I seldom do it. Price aside there is really no advantage and I seldom can play exactly on day 1 anyways.
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Condescension and all aside, if I can get a lower price that is reason enough. It's funny that you have to quantify it as "good" discount. Why wouldn't any discount do? Why would you want to pay more money to the publishers, when the whole argument is about not giving them money for "nothing" ? Forfeiting the pre-order discount for buying the game after launch at full price is literally giving them money for nothing.

Plus pre-ordering means I can pre-load the game, even if I don't end up playing day 1 I have peace of mind that I could if I wanted to.

And even if there were zero tangible benefits, what exactly am I loosing? It's not like any review could sway me from playing the game at this point.
 
M76 said:
what exactly am I loosing?
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I don't know what you're letting loose, but you'd be losing the ability to refund it. Seems like marketing has done its job with you, since you say no review could sway you from buying it!
 
GoldenTiger said:
I don't know what you're letting loose, but you'd be losing the ability to refund it. Seems like marketing has done its job with you, since you say no review could sway you from buying it!
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At least read all the posts I wrote on the topic, don't just knee-jerk react to one sentence out of context.

You aren't able to refund unless you buy the game on steam, which for me costs roughly 30-40% extra compared to pre-ordering elsewhere. No thanks.
 
I suggest doing what I do with all Bethesda games. Wait one year to let them fix the worst bugs then get it on sale.
Should have done that with Cyberpunk.
 
M76 said:
Condescension and all aside, if I can get a lower price that is reason enough. It's funny that you have to quantify it as "good" discount. Why wouldn't any discount do?
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If it is 30 cents cheaper, the saving is kind of pointless. If the game is so bug riddled you can just grab it 3 months post launch when you'll actually play it for less money than that. If you're getting 20-25% off that is a bit different because unless the game is a massive flop, you probably don't see it go on sale for much less until 8 or so months out.

Pre-loading is great but unless your internet is very slow that is kind of a moot point. Especially if you have to re-download most of the game as patches. You can't put a price on "peace of mind", but that is an odd thing to desire.
 
the people that pre-order games are the ones that are planning on getting the game no matter what...otherwise it makes zero sense to do it...I do that with From Software titles (Elden Ring, Sekiro, Dark Souls etc)
 
If you do not see yourself not playing it in anyway and that the pre sales give you anything, really anything like having the download a couple of days in advance and you know it will hurt the soul a little bit to not play your most expected game and see footage on twitter or what not, sure... why not. They will likely offer refund if Cyberpunk happen anyway.
 
Toriessian said:
I suggest doing what I do with all Bethesda games. Wait one year to let them fix the worst bugs then get it on sale.
Should have done that with Cyberpunk.
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I think this strategy applies for most games release these days, Waiting anywhere between three months to a year
 
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