Tag Archives: Gamestop

This is a trend that has been bugging me for an incredibly long time, being that of offering exclusive pre-order content depending on where you purchase a game. Gamestop is clearly the biggest perpetrator of this fuckery.

As I live in New Zealand, anything being offered by Gamestop exclusively is, by default, unobtainable for me. EB Games on the other-hand usually have a similar offer but at a generally higher price than my preferred retailers. This is where things become an annoyance, for example, in Forza 3′s case, there was a Gamestop Exclusive Downloadable Car being released as a pre-order offer, the 2010 Audi R8 V10 to be more specific.

Now, sure, it’s a pretty sweet looking car, coming pre-tuned with an awesome custom paint job. I would definately love to race the thing around in Forza 3, but unlike Gamestop it wasn’t available as an EB Games pre-order offer, and even if it was, you wouldn’t see me driving an hour to the closest EB store to pay for it, go home without it, and go back on release day. Not only do EB have higher prices, they don’t deliver on release day, meaning I would have to spend an additional $20+ in gas to pick the damn thing up. Do not want.

Forza 3 obviously isn’t the only game to have a ridiculous ‘Retailer Exclusive Pre-Order Offer’, other titles that have followed suit in this shit include Assassin’s Creed 2, Halo 3: ODST, [PROTOTYPE], Dead Space, Far Cry 2, and many others.

The content offered in these Pre-Order deals range from in-game content, such as armour permutations, characters, locations & maps etc.. to physical goodies such as figurines, posters, and books. In no way am I saying that it’s a bad thing that these extras are being offered as pre-order gifts, though restricting where they are offered is just plain greed.

Personally, I don’t mind the additional goodies being offered in Limited/Collectors Editions (ie. Lunchboxes, art books, party hats) but it just pisses me off when they start holding back parts of the game such as locations, levels, characters, and models for certain retailers. Game Marketers, keep the in-game content the fucking same, no matter where you pre-order it. It’s that simple.