On any recent trip to a local outlet of a nationwide game store chain warrants a repeating experience. Sometimes I may find myself holding my breath when I enter the door as I am not there as a consumerist, rather I am there as a hobbyist. Just passing the time. There's a great level of satisfaction to be a in a standing room with items of one of my favorite past-times shelved on every wall and marketed in every conceivable fashion. Other times, I have come to the store: money in hand, ready to buy--whatever game just came out that day and I have to own it immediately.
It never fails, however, that no matter what my reasoning for being there is... I am going to be asked the question.
"Is there anything you would like to pre-order?"
"No," I tell them. Dropping $60.00 is already putting me in a financial tongue twister that only impresses me and even thinking about another purchase makes me cringe. Even if it's just a $5.00 deposit.
"Are you sure? Not even for the new Call of Duty?"
I have to reiterate to them, "No. Not today, thank you."
The problem is not the act of customer service. It's not even about the widely known secret: outlets like these receive better pay and appreciation from their district offices for increasing pre-order sales. No, its about the bad taste in my mouth the term, "pre-order" has left because of its usage in these real-life episodes. I am not a Call of Duty fan, I don't appreciate having to answer a question more than once, and I don't like being profiled as a "always-thinking-about-the-next-purchase" type of gamer. I consider myself more of a "frugal gamer." That is, only spending the money on well-researched, conscious decisions.
What I have learned recently is that pre-ordering is not such a bad thing. In fact, if you can take the element of personal-space-invasion out of the process... pre-orders may very well be more successful.
There is a local videogame shop in the Phoenix area ran by an older woman for many years. I love the place because it is feels more optimistic than nationwide chains. I asked her to "reserve" a copy of Metroid: Other M for me to have on release date. After finding out she doesn't expect deliveries on the Tuesdays most hyped games are brought to major retailers... I started to look to make my purchase elsewhere.
Amazon.com hosted a small ad (similar to the attached image) that piqued my interest. It simply stated that if I pre-ordered with Amazon, I would receive $20.00 in videogame credit at Amazon.com. At first I was not sold, but after muling it over, I decided to give it a go. After finding out that my student e-mail made me accessible for free, release date delivery, I was glad I made the purchase.
Sure enough, Metroid: Other M showed up on my doorstep on August 31st and I didn't have to think about scheduling my visit to the retailers. Later that day I received an e-mail from Amazon issuing me the $20.00 credit on my account. I wanted to spend it immediately.
It was in that moment I realized the beauty of the deal. I decided to pre-order Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. It is offerring a $20.00 pre-order as well! What I have been able to do, and what Amazon has enabled it customers to do, is order new titles at a decent discount with the high chance of forwarding that savings on to another pre-ordered title. To me, this is a great business model.
It breathes fresh air into the act of preodering. It shares the wealth of the benefit the retailer makes for establishing pre-orders, especially with big-budget titles. I liken it to the "Free iPod" schemes that started showing up on the internet a few years ago. It's whole purpose was to reward its customers with perks they would actually value--not the finger puppet, t-shire, 15% off strategy guide perks offered by most stone-and-mortar retailers.
As a gaming consumer, I can't even argue with its effectiveness. In essence, deals like this still have the customer paying full price for the title on release day. Therefore the publisher and developer should still get their full cut of the profits gained. Amazon is covering the "missing" dollar amount from the perk offered to the end-user as a way to stir up more volume of the pre-orders.
I admit that Amazon's gratitude does me wonder what exactly are the kind of perks retailers are offered for driving up the presale count.
