"No Man's Sky was the best game I ever played." See? That makes it sound better than it actually was and didn't cost me anything more than if I said "I personally liked it" or "It was pretty fun". [spoiler]Disclaimer: I never played it, never even wanted to, I said from the beginning that it was trash.[/spoiler] The problem you're having here is thinking that making your game look "better than it will be" doesn't really cost more than showing the game for what it is. All they've done is make a couple trailers, schedule a showing of live gameplay on stream, and give us a release date. The only money they could throw at this thing, marketing-wise, is at E3. But are you really gonna pre-order just because they have beanie babies and shirts to sell? Do those have anything to do with telling you the quality of the game? No.

No Man's Sky was the best game I ever played. See? That makes it sound better than it actually was and didn't cost me anything. The problem you're having here is thinking that making your game look "better than it will be" doesn't really cost more that showing the game for what it is. All they've done is make a couple trailers, schedule a showing of live gameplay on stream, and give us a release date. The only money they could throw at this thing, marketing-wise, is at E3. But are you really gonna pre-order just because they have beanie babies and shirts to sell? Do those have anything to do with telling you the quality of the game? No.

Utter bull-schit. People's livelihoods are dependent on the success of the products they produce. No one in games publishing is making an absurd 'financial plan' that decides to blow all the budget on developing a quality product OR spend all the money on marketing, based on pre-orders when they don't begin until the game is 80-90% developed. The big decisions that affect the final quality of D2 were made 1-2 years ago. By pre-order time it's too late to significantly alter the fundamentals of the game. And it's the job of the marketing dept to build hype for a product, and promote it accordingly. It's their entire purpose. But maybe you know that as you are such an expert on business LOL

That's both a naive and incorrect view how business works. Pre-ordering a game has no impact on its final state. A game that's late or incomplete would've been late or incomplete without the pre-orders.

[quote]lol, here's how business works. Supply and Demand. If publishers can secure more money from pre-orders (rather than word of mouth/reviews after the game is released), they will spend more resources on securing pre-orders rather than making a game that will sell through word of mouth. Obviously this decision is made in a financial plan before the game even starts developing. This is why games have been over-hyped in the past few years. They make the game sound better than it is, secure the money, then act surprised when the game isn't what they said it was. Pre-orders are the reason for No Mans Sky, Mass Effect: Andromeda and recent Call of Dutys exist.[/quote] BOOM THANK YOU