7 Reasons I Stopped Pre-Ordering Games (And You Should Too)

howtogeek.com:

It's easy to get excited about a new game and jump the gun with a pre-order to secure your copy and take advantage of any pre-release bonuses. But this decision can sometimes come back to haunt you. In the modern era, there aren't a lot of reasons to pre-order games at all (in fact, there are more reasons not to).

1 Tricky Marketing Can Be Misleading

Video game marketing can be a little misleading, as trailers often show scenes or mechanics that don't make it into the final game or focus on cinematics over actual gameplay. This can lead to a somewhat skewed idea of what the game actually looks like from a consumer standpoint, setting unrealistic expectations in the process.

It's important to recognize that game trailers are showing off a product that is still in active development in many cases, so graphical fidelity and performance may not be on quite the same level on release. Game trailers frequently display a "not final" type disclaimer notifying you of this, though the text can be so small it's easy to miss.

On top of this, some publishers and developers are known for making promises about games that they never fully deliver on. Even if a game ends up being good, it's important to temper expectations.

2 Many Games Lack Content at Launch

Since trailers focus solely on the best and most appealing parts of a game to sell to consumers, the actual product sometimes fails to deliver on much else. In other words, sometimes games just do not have a lot to offer at launch, either because they're too short or embrace the live service model of rolling out content over the course of several seasons.

It's a good idea to wait for a game to come out and see if what it has to offer meets your expectations before making a $70 investment. No Man's Sky suffered from a lackluster launch but eventually improved with updates to become perhaps the most impactful redemption arc in gaming history. In some cases, you could even wait for a "complete" edition of a game that