My thoughts on the subject are mixed. In general money is an issue with me, so when I have spare cash I oftentimes will pre-order a game I think I'm going to like, rather than trying to scrape together the money at the last minute since things always seem to come up. My taste in games being odd enough, where I don't always agree with the popular perception of what is good or bad anyway (though I do wind up matching most trends in the final equasion).
That said, I haven't been pre-ordering a lot of games recently, due to there being very few that really impress me on the horizon, and I have to admit Total Biscuit makes some good points about why you shouldn't pre-order.
To be honest though I'll say that I'm not entirely shocked by the whole way "Colonial Marines" turned out. I've commented on the game before, even if I'm not a FPS player so had no desire to run right out and buy it, namely in saying that it seemed like a reasonable take on how such a scenario would play out according to the IP based on what
we saw, and that it's possible Gearbox could do a good job. I do however remember mentioning a couple of times that I think Gearbox has been being a bit overrated because to be honest it seems like their only real success has been Borderlands, I could be forgetting something (or need another reminder if I've fogotten before) but to my knowlege nothing else they have done has been all that impressive. Their last outing into a straightforward FPS didn't turn out so hot (Duke Nukem). This was very much a hit or miss project, and while it would have been nice if they succeeded, it doesn't shock me that they wound up with a reaction a lot closer to DNF than Borderlands. It also occurs to m that they aren't exactly handling Borderlands well either, as right alongside this whole "Colonial Marines" debacle, I'm reading articles about how Gearbox designed itself into a corner, creating a situation where it can't raise the level cap of it's own game without breaking it, and this with something like 4 DLC packs none of which allow for further character advancement, all of which were planned when they knew this was going to be a problem. Gearbox increasingly doesn't seem like a good developer, but more like a bad developer that stumbled into a surprise success with an action RPG.
CB's points about pre-orders are good, but I think there is as much to say for gamers as consumers having very limited memories. Next time Gearbox releases a game, heck let's even say it's "Borderlands 3", how many people are going to remember what happened with Colonial Marines and have that influance their desician on whether to support the product initially or not? It's a problem when the successes of a company tend to outweigh it's failures to such a signifigant degree, it takes something really stupendous for gamers to remain focused for anything other than the extreme short term.
