Poll: Would you buy a game before the release date?

[Winthrop]

So there is a store in my town, which store it is escapes me but its part of a national chain, that has a habit of releasing things early accidentally and then pulling them from their shelves after a few hours. Anyway, they have done this with some fairly major releases including Modern Warfare 3. One of my friends bought about 5 copies of it while they were accidentally on the shelves about a week or two before release. He sold them to various people through Ebay for about $250 each and made a rather sizable profit.

My question for you is that if you had the opportunity to buy a game one week before the release date, would you do it? Why or why not? It is not an illegal action so you would not get in any sort of trouble for it.

As for me, I can't really see it happening. I don't tend to buy games until the price comes down a bit. If I was planning on buying it on day 1, I would probably have it preordered already anyway and would prefer the preorder bonuses to getting it a week earlier. Plus for a multiplayer game, noone would be on the servers so little could be done.

 

[JoJo]

I only preorder games which come from established series I know I like, but if I had the opportunity to get one of those games earlier at the same price, sure I'd get it. At a higher price... only if it was just a little higher, I can wait.

 

[Smertnik]

I preorder games all the time, as long as there's a discount.

 

[Shinsei-J]

I'd buy them for a regular price if it didn't seem to shady in practice.
I also often buy pre-orders so it doesn't really make much difference for me, only time and I really don't care about waiting.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

If it's a game I want then I would more than likely grab it. I don't generally sell my games back so I would likely miss out on the additional profit of selling an unreleased game but that's not a big deal as far as I'm concerned. Additionally, I play games offline so I presumably wouldn't have to worry about getting caught for playing the game before the release date.

 

[StriderShinryu]

Would I buy a game early? Absolutely. If I know it's something I'm going to want to play and I know I'll be buying it day 1 anyway (and I maybe even have it preordered), why wouldn't I buy it a week in advance?

Now, would I actually pay more to get it early> It depends on the game and the amount. If it's something I really really want to play and the extra cost isn't exorbitant (say it's $10 at the absolute most), sure. But the cases in which I'd do that would be pretty few.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

Due to my preference for PC games, the near ubiquity of Steamworks on all new releases and easy ability to create ISO's I doubt there would be any opportunity like the one you just described happening. If a copy was accidentally released to the public either Steam would prevent it from being played or the game would be cracked and torrrented (most likely the latter).

 

[Easton Dark]

I don't do the buy low, sell high thing. Seems very stressful. I buy games I want to play, and I don't plan to resell them.

No, I would not buy a game before the release date. Not before I see the reviews. And not before the first patch for it is out. I did that for one game, Borderlands, and it was the biggest buyers mistake I've ever made with games.

Then I got to thinking, why would I pay the most for the worst version of the game?

 

[Vausch]

After the ripoff I felt with Brink, no I don't preorder any more.

 

[King of Asgaard]

I tend to take purchases seriously, so I wait for the reviews to come out and for the general consensus to be positive before I buy any new games.

 

[DugMachine]

If the game was at the regular price and I had a chance to get it a few days before? Perhaps.

 

[Mcupobob]

Going to pre-order Company of Heroes 2, possible next month. Other than that have never pre-orderd besides I guess the Panda expansion to WoW though that was like an hour before the expansion came out.

 

[madwarper]

I'm sure there's some grand marketing reasoning behind why a distributor would give a store product and then ask them to sit on it for some time before the "release date"... But, for the life of me, I can't fathom what it would be.

As far as I'm concerned, as soon as the store releases the product for sale is the release date, regardless of whether or not this matches the wishes of the distributor. Though, I would never pay an exorbitant amount of money like the people who bought the games from the OP's friend.

 

[Winthrop]

I'm sure there's some grand marketing reasoning behind why a distributor would give a store product and then ask them to sit on it for some time before the "release date"... But, for the life of me, I can't fathom what it would be.

As far as I'm concerned, as soon as the store releases the product for sale is the release date, regardless of whether or not this matches the wishes of the distributor. Though, I would never pay an exorbitant amount of money like the people who bought the games from the OP's friend.

The reason they sit on the product a bit before release is to ensure that all businesses have it on the official release date so some small town doesn't get it weeks after some bigger place or so that Wall Mart doesn't get all the sales over K Mart or something because they released it early. You do bring up an interesting point about the day the store sells it being the release date though.

I don't do the buy low, sell high thing. Seems very stressful. I buy games I want to play, and I don't plan to resell them.

No, I would not buy a game before the release date. Not before I see the reviews. And not before the first patch for it is out. I did that for one game, Borderlands, and it was the biggest buyers mistake I've ever made with games.

Then I got to thinking, why would I pay the most for the worst version of the game?

Thats a really good point. It would be the worst version before release as no patches would be out and none of the online components would work. Although I suspect you just mean early in general. I tend to wait for a GOTY edition if I expect one to be released. And yeah I too would be horribly stressed by the idea of trying to turn a profit on that kind of thing. I even hate doing it in videogames haha.

 

[KiloFox]

never... unless of course it was to resell and bilk others at a profit like your friend.

i can wait for my games

 

[Legion]

At the same price, sure. I'd never pay more for a copy though, I am not so desperate for a new game that I'd hand out extra cash rather than wait a week.

 

[Campaigner]

Yes, I would buy it at regular price

But I mean Kickstarter games that can be really cheap (10-30$).


The reselling your friend does sounds too risky to mee (I take safe options IRL).

 

[Crazy Zaul]

Only if I could make a profit like he did.

 

[thejackyl]

If there's a preorder bonus, and it's a game I would probably buy on release day, than yes.

For example:
X-COM: Extra soldier, TF2 items, Free Civ 5
Dishonored: TF2 items, Free Arx Fatalis

However if it's a game like Fallout 3/NV, Skyrim, any MMO (basically any game with an open or huge world), no. MMO's simply because I wouldn't be able to log in for a week anyways (See: what happened on D3's launch), and Fallout/Elder Scrolls games... well from now on I'm going to wait for the complete editions.

 

[Lt._nefarious]

Hell yes!

If someone told me, 2 months ago, that I could buy Resident Evil 6 early I so would.

I actually got Gears 3 a few days early due to a mix up at Amazon which led to them dispatching my game before the release date...