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providing the vendor with a small percentage of the game's cost to hold their reservation (such as $ 5 or $ 10 on a $ 50 game), with assurances they would receive their copy on release day after paying the remaining balance. Retailers would be able to use pre-order money towards other investments, effectively accruing some
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Pre-ordering is a part of most major releases but is now a significant point of contention. Some consumers believe pre-ordering to be a waste and do not believe that any kind of incentive is truly worth a marked up price of sometimes over twice the original price for certain digital in-game pre-order
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Reasons vary, but typically, publishers wish to ensure strong initial sales for a product, and the offered incentive is used to induce shoppers who might otherwise wait for positive reviews or a specific shopping period, like the holiday season, to commit to a purchase. Having paid for part or all of
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is an order placed for an item that has not yet been released. The idea for pre-orders came because people found it hard to get popular items in stores because of their popularity. Companies then had the idea to allow customers to reserve their personal copy before its release, which has been a huge
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Then, publishers and retailers started to turn to other methods to encourage pre-orders. Publishers created limited edition packages that would include additional physical items with the game, such as art books, soundtrack CDs, or figurines of the game's characters. Such editions would be published
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discovered in the early 2000s that the pre-ordering mechanism helped with forecasts, as they could order a reasonable number of copies of new games based on pre-order interest, which, in turn, helped publishers to determine how many physical units to create. Then, pre-orders were usually placed by
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Pre-orders allow consumers to guarantee immediate shipment on release, manufacturers can gauge how much demand there will be and thus the size of initial production runs, and sellers can be assured of minimum sales. Additionally, high pre-order rates can be used to increase sales further.
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sometime later after the game's original release. Others have pointed out that with the pre-ordering process, publishers can effectively assure a sale of the game to those consumers and so can release the game in an unfinished state or missing certain features to that
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on the item's purchase price or other related merchandise, another marketing strategy, or it may be an actual item or set of items. The items may be related merchandise or exclusive items available only through the pre-order program.
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only in limited numbers encouraging consumers to pre-order early to reserve one. Retailers made deals with publishers to allow for unique content for the game that could be obtained only by pre-orders through that vendor.
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for the
European Union. The court ruled in January 2020 that Nintendo's practice does not violate the directive, though the German consumer authority does plan to appeal the ruling.
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the purchase when placing the order, the consumers will usually complete the transaction shortly after the product's release, often on its first day in stores. Individual stores or
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has a policy for digital pre-orders that does not allow such refunds. Consumer authorities in
Germany and Norway took Nintendo to court in 2019, arguing this practice violated the
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may also offer bonuses for a popularly anticipated product to ensure that the customer chooses to buy at that location, rather than from a competitor.
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eliminated the need for retail versions started to take off, as there is effectively no fixed volume of digital copies.
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In most cases, a pre-order can be refunded to the purchaser prior to release. However,
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For reflexive and transitive binary relations in mathematics, see
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460:"Possibly The Most Pointless Video Game Pre-Order Of All Time"
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Order placed for an item that has not yet been released
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345:"Why You Shouldn't Pre-Order Your Video Games"
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306:References
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