HotBloodGaming
While speaking at a panel at GDC, Cliff Bleszinski touched upon a myriad of different topics. It was very brief, but one of those topics was game preorders. Bleszinski feels that preorders as a sales metrics need to go. He said we should use other aggregates as a way to find out about games. Things like YouTube comments, news stories, and hits these things receive.
Preorders as a sales metric needs to fucking go, I’m done with this. We are no longer in a world where you can’t find a game. Okay like maybe GameStop will sell it every once in a while, but just go to Target or Walmart or Amazon day one. This is no longer the era of gold cartridges and chip shortages. Find new aggregates in YouTube comments, in news stories, in hits and lets use that.
Bleszinski is right, preorders as a sales metric should go. There are plenty of other ways to gauge how successful a game might be. Also, companies like GameStop hound the living hell out of you at the register to preorder something and say if you don’t “you won’t get it.” Bleszinski is right that games today are not that hard to come by — especially after they are released. You can almost always walk into a store like Target and Walmart and easily pick a copy up — if you didn’t preorder it at GameStop and they really don’t have a copy for you.
I’ve personally been told several times by GameStop employees “it’s got a lot of preorders, you might not get a copy on release day,” but walk in and get one without a preorder. Preordering is more a tactic for businesses like GameStop to ensure they will have your sale the day a game comes out — not to see how popular a game is. Keep in mind that not everyone who wants a game buys it day one either. All-in-all preorders are a silly way to judge a game’s success before it’s even released into the market.
http://www.hotbloodedgaming.com/2011/03/04/gdc-2011-cliff-bleszinski-preorders-as-sales-metric-need-to-fucking-go/
