Cold Coffee: Pre-Order Rip Offs

Remember my little rant about the ridiculousness of overpriced DLC? Well this sort of falls in a similar category.

Pre-ordering is one of the sleaziest ways to suck some more cash out of your consumers. At first, it started small with an extra $10 for this or $15 for that but it's become completely out of control. Now consumers are asking you for double the original price, at times, for a neat case and some trinkets you'll never touch more than once. It's pure madness and it needs to end.

Now some people can say ‘If you don't want it, don't buy it' and I don't, but what really bugs me is all the fans that are getting sucked into blowing all their cash on these useless items just because of ‘Oh, shiny!' syndrome. If you're a collector, then so be it. I've seen collectors spend so much more on office decorations but for the rest of us, this is just unacceptable. Just look at Call of Duty: Black Ops II's ‘hardened' edition. These guys want $180 for this? Madness! I hope those who purchased this are happy with spending that much dough on a RC toy and some in-game extras because that's what it all boils down to.

Call of Duty's ‘hardened' edition is nothing compared to the occasional pre-order you see that just makes you cry for whoever actually bought it. Resident Evil 6 anyone? For those who haven't seen it, Resident Evil 6 has a pre-order package inJapanfor a whopping $1300 USD for nothing more than the game and a replica Leon Kennedy jacket. Even if that jacket is a good quality leather, that's a huge rip off. I guarantee you can find that same jacket on eBay for a couple hundred bucks.

Believe it or not, I've seen some pre-orders that are actually worth the cost so I'd like to just say ‘thanks' to the guys who put out a bundle that's actually worth paying extra for. Why must the video game industry attempt to rip us off at every chance they get? We've supported them for decades and they just keep taking and taking. It's not cool, it ain't right and I hate it…