The preorder has long been a staple of the video game retail industry, and with good reason. You get a customer to purchase a game ahead of its release in return for a small trinket. The hope is that buyer will keep coming back to the store, and in turn the store can provide more accurate supply numbers to the publisher and thus ensure an adequate stock. It's also been a great way for retailers to sit on that cash long before ever handing over the product.
What has made this more interesting over the years is how far some retailers and game publishers have gone to get people to come to them, and them only. This arms race has lead to some great, and some not-so-great, trends in preorder goodies. Here are five of the best and five of the worst in the last couple of years.
The best
1. Getting the game before its release date
What is easily the holy grail of preorder goodies is getting the game ahead of its official street date. Very few games have ever done this intentionally, though. This usually happens only when a retailer mistakenly sells the title without knowing there's a specific release date, or when games are shipped by mail and the snafu is committed by the shipping company.
In the case of Call of Duty: World at War, which was released last November, GameStop sold the title a day ahead of its official release to those who had preordered it. According to Planet Xbox 360, the game retailer went directly to FedEx's shipping facilities to pick up the game ahead of its slated delivery time.
Also, customers who prebought Mythic Entertainment's Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning got to build their characters and start playing on the game's servers four days before the game launched--if they bought the collector's edition, while preorderers of the standard edition got a two day head start. The same went for those who preordered Pirates of the Burning Sea, who got to start playing the MMO 15 days ahead of people who simply bought it on its release day.
2. Free games
Coming up just short of getting the new game early is publishers who offer a copy of one of their previous titles free of charge. That was the case for Rockstar games, which through Valve's Steam online game store gave PC gamers who preordered Grand Theft Auto 4 a free copy of GTA: Vice City, a title from earlier in the GTA series.
Preorderers of Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts on Xbox 360 got a free code for the original Banjo-Kazooie game on XBOX Live Arcade a whole two weeks before it was officially released to other gamers.
Lionhead studios gave preorderers of the Xbox 360 version of Fable 2 a free (normally $10) Xbox Live Arcade title that let them play some of the title's in-game minigames ahead of the release, as well as put any gold they earned to use in the game once they got it.
Earlier notables include: Preorderers of Red Alert 3 getting a free Red Alert 2 download, and the Zelda: Ocarina of Time disc that came with the Zelda Wind Waker for Gamecube, which had been one of the top games of the year four years prior. Nintendo went through the effort of porting it from the previous generation's system to the GameCube, as well as throwing in a more difficult variation of the game that had previously been unreleased in the U.S. just for those buyers. Now that's cool.
3. Getting the "better" edition of the game, free of charge
The "limited" editions of games almost always cost more, and come with a few extra goodies like a download code from extra in-game content, or a spiffy case with things like concept art books and soundtrack CDs.
This time last year, Ubisoft surprised gamers who had preordered the latest Prince of Persia game with a free upgrade to the limited edition, which featured a making-of featurette, digital art book, and the soundtrack. It certainly wasn't as lavish as some other limited-edition packages, but it was free.
Developer Arksys did the same thing earlier this year with its 2D fighter BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger. Prebuyers who purchased the normal game ahead of time got upgraded to the limited-edition free of charge, which included a video strategy guide and two-disc soundtrack with close to 50 tracks.
... Read moreThis is Part 2 of a list of my favorite sounding CDs of late, in no particular order. My preference is for realistic-sounding recordings, recordings that allow the band to sound "live." And sure, I still like a lot of recordings that are heavily processed, but I wouldn't by any stretch use them to "test" the naturalness of a speaker.
The first half of the top 10 CD list appeared in the previous Audiophiliac.
A different kind of heavy metal music.
Savage Aural Hotbed, "Wreckquiem"
Talk about heavy metal, Savage Aural Hotbed is a (mostly) industrial percussion group. They rhythmically hit, scrape, or smash pipes, barrels, tenor and baritone snorkelhorns, electric power tools, and drums. I love SAH records for their dense textures and searing dynamics and this new one will give your system an aerobic workout while dazzling your ears with its mesmerizing charms.
Ms. Cash at her best
Rosanne Cash, "10 Song Demo"
OK, this one's from 1996, but it's withstood the test of time. True to the title, it's just Cash accompanied by a small group of players, Production is minimal, so if your system is good enough the music can sound very, very real. The music's a perfect 10.
Jazz that'll rock your world
Gerald Clayton, "Two-Shade"
Clayton's nimble piano trio delivers hard-driving pieces and explosive improvisations that'll push your hi-fi to the limit. The piano, bass, and drums balance is, musically and sonically, as good as it gets. It may be Clayton's trio, but it's a band of equals. The stereo image is set back, behind the plane of my speakers, so it doesn't have the claustrophobic, up close perspective of most contemporary jazz recordings.
... Read more
Dead Space was not only one of the best games of 2008, it was also the scariest.
This year was certainly a great year to be a gamer. As usual, the first three-quarters of the year had an occasion hit or two, but come October it felt like we were bombarded with an infinite amount of must-play titles.
Filtering through the hundreds of releases in 2008, we've narrowed a list down an elite crop of games that stand out among the rest. We've played everything out there and made sure at least one exclusive representative from each platform made the list. So in no particular order may we present to you the top 10 video games of 2008.
Didn't see your favorite game here? Sound off in the comments section.
Can you get built-in Bluetooth for less than $100?
MP3 players don't have to be expensive to be good, and I can prove it. I scoured CNET Reviews to find the best MP3 players that can be purchased online for less than $100. The results are fairly impressive, and certainly much more exciting than the ones we were able to compile for this same feature more than two years ago--you gotta love cheap flash memory.
All the devices that made this top-10 list pack at least 2GB of storage, scored at least a 7.0 out of 10, and were (for the most part) reviewed within the past two years (so they're not totally outdated). Each player also offers two or more of the following characteristics: good sound quality; a stylish, compact design; advanced features, such as an FM radio or recording capabilities; and an impressive battery life. Of course, the best part is that none of them will break the bank. The pricing for each player is current as of press time and applies to new products--no refurbs here!
Check out the slide show of our top 10 players for less than $100.
It's been just a month since the App Store hit the streets, and the number of applications has skyrocketed. That doesn't mean they're all winners though. The vast majority are downright useless, buggy, or simply overpriced. Heck, some have even been removed by Apple because of all-around lameness. Since our inaugural list of absurd iPhone apps was a big hit, we've picked another group of 10 that are even more absurd than the first ones.
Note: this list is not the same as the version that was published Monday afternoon. Glagow Coma Scale has been replaced with 40 Cozy's Pour1out in light of creator Brent Thompson's comment about the people it's helped. That's not so absurd.
1. GottaGo
Price: $1.99
This is one of those apps you hope is some sort of sick joke. Designed to get you out of a bad date or an awkward conversation, you can use GottaGo to ring you up with a fake phone call that looks real to your unsuspecting date. All you have to do is set the time like you would an alarm and it will call you, with faked caller ID and everything.
Why it's absurd: Be a decent human being and tell someone when it's just not working. They'll probably respect you more and it'll tie things up better than trying to explain why your apartment being on fire means you'll have to skip dessert.
Track your drinking exploits with DrinkBuddy.
(Credit: Apple/John Moffett)2. DrinkBuddy
Price: $3.99
Having trouble figuring out if you're drunk or not? Why not use your phone? Instead of a breathalyzer, DrinkBuddy uses the ancient art of math to give you generally precise indications of how inebriated you are based on what you've had to drink. Better yet, you can link up with your friends and see what they've had to drink, and record your past benders in a log that can be e-mailed to friends.
Why it's absurd: A night out is fun, but mass quantities of liquids and $200-plus handsets do not mix. Also, the fact that you could accidentally e-mail your mom at 2 a.m. with your Jägermeister exploits seems like a really, really bad idea.
3. 40Cozy.com's Pour1out
Price: $2.99
We've seen the popular Carling iPint, which was later pulled from the US app store--at least that one had a game attached to it. This one by the folks at 40Cozy.com is a dressed up way to sell foam coolers for 40 ouncers of malt liquor, while letting you pour our virtual booze with a simple tip of your phone.
(Credit:
Crave UK)
In The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams wrote, "Space is big--really big--you just won't believe how vastly, hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. You may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space."
Space's roominess is good news for us rapidly multiplying humans, because it seems logical that we should one day want to expand into our solar system--and possibly further. But because of our frail and squishy bodies we need some heavyweight protection to leave the cozy home comforts of our bijou atmosphere, and great ingenuity to even have a look around. This list celebrates the best spacecraft--those that have taken us to new places or brought us information about what's out there. Take the intergalactic tour here.
(Source: Crave UK)
Must-have gadgets
(Credit: CNET Networks)There's a whole new round of hot tech, handpicked by CNET editors for the must-have gadgets list. The still-hard-to-get Nintendo Wii, tiny laptops, rocking MP3 players, and more. See what made the cut this month.
Disagree with this month's picks? Post a comment and tell us what your must-have gadget pick would be.
(Credit:
Crave UK)
You're making a movie, or a TV show. You've got the awesome concept, you've got the heroic lead, and a staunch band of loyal allies. You've got your evil villain, your cool technology, your amazing gadgets. But there's something missing. The final detail that will really seal the deal on your killer concept. What can it be?
You need a kid. And a robot.
When film and television wonks are putting together a project, audience identification is high on their minds--or at least whatever it is they're using instead of minds. If kids are going to watch a film or a TV show, the logic goes that they need to see a kid up on screen to "identify with." Apparently children struggle to identify with bad-ass grown-ups screaming around in unutterably radical sports cars that turn into helicopters, whupping supervillain ass and taking hot chick names. No. They need kids with bowl haircuts that fall down holes.
See the 10 most annoying examples of this genre here.
(Source: Crave UK)
(Credit:
Crave UK)
Pink phones used to be unusual, but now they're everywhere, in every shade from blossom to rose, bubblegum to candy heart, and palest peach to bright magenta.
Whether you're a girly girl taking your fashion cues from Elle in Legally Blonde, a metrosexual man making the ultimate statement about your sexual confidence, or--more probably--you just like pink, the perfect phone is just a few clicks away. Click the numbers at the top to browse through our top 10, then let us know which ones you like best--and what we should have left out. Click here to see them all.
(Source: Crave UK)
There is no doubt whatsoever that 2007 was a impressive year for video games. Everyone has their own Top 10 list, but we hate the whole numbered list cliche. Instead, we've grouped the Top 10, in no particular order, giving each game its own due respect. These 10 games achieve a certain elite status that separate themselves from all the rest providing us with some of the most advanced digital entertainment available today. So without any further ado, please enjoy our picks for the Top 10 Games of 2007.
