This is a really clever idea, especially after some of the total boners on pre-order ideas by other companies in the recent past (I'm thinking of the craptastic thing Bethesda tried and abandoned for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.).
The pre-order bonus for Civ 6 will be immediate access to a Civ that all other players will get for free three months later. So it's not a financial offer - latecomers won't have to pay anything. But it's still a great incentive for those of us who would buy the game anyway, to take the risk of pre-ordering.
Admittedly, Firaxis is one of the few companies that I don't feel I'm risking much to preoorder from. Even Civ: Beyond Earth, which was quite a bit weaker than I'd hoped and expected, was not such a disappointment that I felt I'd not have bought it if I'd waited for reviews. And Starships was clearly telegraphed and priced as a "lite" game.
But this approach is something that I hope other companies will emulate, and that I think they'll find reasonable to emulate. Making special preoorder content that will either never be available to latecomers is giving anybody who heard about the game late a strong disincentive to buy. Making preorder content available later as DLC is a bit blatant (almost as bad as shipping a game where chunks were obviously ripped out to be sold as DLC - I'm looking at you, Dragon Age: Origins).
The pre-order bonus for Civ 6 will be immediate access to a Civ that all other players will get for free three months later. So it's not a financial offer - latecomers won't have to pay anything. But it's still a great incentive for those of us who would buy the game anyway, to take the risk of pre-ordering.
Admittedly, Firaxis is one of the few companies that I don't feel I'm risking much to preoorder from. Even Civ: Beyond Earth, which was quite a bit weaker than I'd hoped and expected, was not such a disappointment that I felt I'd not have bought it if I'd waited for reviews. And Starships was clearly telegraphed and priced as a "lite" game.
But this approach is something that I hope other companies will emulate, and that I think they'll find reasonable to emulate. Making special preoorder content that will either never be available to latecomers is giving anybody who heard about the game late a strong disincentive to buy. Making preorder content available later as DLC is a bit blatant (almost as bad as shipping a game where chunks were obviously ripped out to be sold as DLC - I'm looking at you, Dragon Age: Origins).
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