Good post. I prefer them to a broken or rushed product, and can tolerate them up to a point. Last Guardian level of delays are way too much for me. I hate pre-orders more than delays.

LMAO Brilliant. 

Agreed, Pre-Orders are another awful thing entirely :/

I'm so out of touch lately that, in a few cases, a game has released or releases months before I'm ready. Evil Within, Ori and the Blind Forest, and The Order all seemed far off but I was like "What? It's out now!?" I've just come to accept that games I want are always out of reach.

Yeah I really don't understand people that pre-order especially after 2014. Is waiting one or two days really so hard?

option 3 for sure; only naive users believe that a lot of these 'delays' are specifically to make the games better. often they are to avoid certain competition, to fix really awful errors that would make a game unplayable (that's not a bonus that's expected), and in some cases they are used to get people more excited with promises that never end up happening. 'we had to work these extra 3 months to give you guys the game you have been dying to play!'

occasionally obviously the game will be fantastic and you can attribute it to the extra time point in, but rarely does that seem to be the point. in fact I can't think of ANY game in the last few years with significant delays that ended up better than was expected or where there was something 'extra' about it where I thought to myself 'wow I see what they were doing those extra months or even year'

again, the only reason delays are becoming so common is because developers flat out lie to get people excited. they give extremely early release dates with promises of awesome content, and when there unrealistic goals to not come into place say they are 'improving' and 'adding' things to an already great game. the reality is that they are in crunch time most often of these instances, with substantial problems to their games

don't fall for it

so the last answer, obviously there are genuine cases but when a developer keeps delaying a game with the promise or excuse that they just want to give you an ultimate experience that should set off red flags. because they've already half lied to you in the first place

My problem with the hype machine is not the delays. My problem is when developers show you those nice trailers and make you think the game is going to be awesome. You get hyped for it, and then comes the moment when you play it... only to find out the game isn't as awesome as it looked.

That's why I don't pre order anymore. And why I don't get hyped anymore.

Pretty much this, every time I see really beautiful game footage, I tend to get hyped about it and then by the time I actually get to play the game it;s mostly not the same or it's been changed and feels like a letdown for me.

Now all I do is just watch a trailer, never buy into the hype and just roll my eyes whenever there's another delay, all hyping a game does to me is just kill what it could have been rather than what it is.

I also really see no reason to pre order games, like ever at all since there's no benefit to forking money over early when all you do is buy into a promise, not a reality.