Why Did I Pre-Order Cyberpunk 2077 on Google Stadia, a Game Streaming Service?
I just found out that Cyberpunk 2077 will release on Google Stadia on the same day as it will release on consoles and PC. So of course I pre-ordered it! Wait, why did I do that. That actually seems kinda dumb.
Look, Cyberpunk 2077 looks like it will be amazing. I don’t question my excitement for the game nor my desire to play it as soon as possible. That’s not the dumb part. But when it comes to pre-ordering a game on a streaming service, from a consumer standpoint, from a gamer standpoint, from a not developer or publisher standpoint, pre-ordering a game from a streaming service is pretty dumb. Again, I did this, so I did the dumb thing, and if you also did this dumb thing, funny defend your dumb act. Let’s be friends, bonded by our dumbness. Friends who get to play Cyberpunk 2077 on launch day at…2:00 am? Hey, we’re dumb, remember. Let’s do it.
While the concept of a pre-order has remained pretty much the same over the last several decades, its purpose has evolved. Back in the day of physical-only media, a pre-order helped set expectations for production runs. For retail outlets, the number of pre-orders a game receives helps stores estimate how many copies to stock. For developers and publishers, the pre-order count helps get a sense about the velocity that the development costs would be recouped and pre-orders help whet the potential for eventually turning a profit. For game publishers and developers, pre-orders always have been and are still a great and important thing.
For gamers, the physical pre-order was a way to ensure you’d get your copy of Bendy and the Ink Machine on day one. Because who knows, maybe Bendy and the Ink Machine would be sold out by the time you got to the store. Because the game is so good… It’s garbage.
As games distribution turns away from physical and further toward digital, pre-orders still have the same level of importance to developers, publishers, and retailers–it’s a signal of interest, strong interest I will add, a distinction that will be important as I later bring up the concept of the wishlist. But to gamers, the pre-order has become less important. Digital goods aren’t subject to retail store stock limitations. Pre-ordering was less a way to ensure you could play the game on day one and more a way to empty your wallet with nothing to show for it.
This realization wasn’t lost on developers and publishers. So bring forth the world of pre-order bonuses. Developers and publishers rely on pre-orders, as I’ve said, so as gamers become less compelled to hand over cash for no immediate return, pre-order bonuses then become more prominent. While I personally don’t care for pre-order bonuses–I’ve never been compelled to pre-order a game so I could get that fancy new skin in my single-player game–I do love the other thing that publishers and software platforms started to allow: pre-installation.
Pre-installation is the latest attempt to encourage pre-order of digital games.
Pre-installing a game means that when the game is officially released, you don’t have to then wait hours for the game to install. This is a rare example of a valid reason for consumers to pre-order a digital game. Publishers and Devs get their precious pre-order data and gamers get their precious few additional hours of gameplay. Everything seems right with the pre-order world.
Not surprisingly, as pre-orders became less relevant to gamers in the digital world, a new way to judge interest cropped up and fast: the wishlist. According to data from Value, the owner of Steam, about 26% of users who add a game to their wishlist prior to the game’s launch will end up purchasing the game within the first 12 months, with 13% of those sales being within the first week. That’s huge! To gamers, a wishlist add implies a lesser commitment than fully pre-ordering, so I imagine gamers are more willing to provide publishers with wishlist data rather than commit to a full pre-order.
But now, with game streaming services like Geforce, Shadow, Playstation Now, Xbox cloud gaming, the forthcoming Amazon Luna, and of course, Google Stadia, gamers have yet another reason to not care about pre-ordering a game. The simple truth is that if there’s nothing to download, nothing to install, and no physical stock scarcity to be scared of, why should anyone pre-order a video game? Other than for the cool pre-order bonuses, but again, I’m not personally swayed by that as I’m sure other gamers aren’t either.
It’s really pretty dumb for anyone to pre-order a game from a streaming game platform, right? And with Google Stadia, Google doesn’t take your money until release day, so there’s not even the benefit of using the pre-order to help you budget your personal game buying allowance.
As for the wishlist, Google Stadia, my cloud gaming platform of choice, hasn’t introduced the functionality yet, and honestly I’m not sure they will. The pre-order serves the same purpose for them, considering the money isn’t taken until the game releases, a fact that Stadia makes very clear. Why include a pre-order button, not a wishlist button, and then tell the user that the pre-order is basically the same as a wishlist?
Well, my belief is that Stadia is attempting to court publishers to its platform by normalizing the idea of a pre-order. Stadia wants to make pre-ordering a game as frictionless as adding a game to a wishlist. But given that it’s still called a pre-order, the potential customer may be more compelled to follow-through with the purchase. The aim here is written commitment, a powerful psychology concept that works to influence people to take action where they otherwise might hesitate to do so.
Therefore, the 13% first week sales that Steam credits toward its wishlist functionality could someday be higher for Stadia’s pre-order functionality. That would be quite the compelling metric for developers and publishers, which could help increase the number of games available on Stadia. Of course, Steam has a robust store-front that helps push wishlisted items to the wishlisting users, something Stadia definitely does not have, so any turmoil in the Steam vs Stadia pre-order/wishlist world wouldn’t be happening anytime soon.
So what’s the point of pre-ordering a game from a streaming platform? That’s a genuine question. Why do you do it? Or, what keeps you from doing it? Are you persuaded by pre-order bonuses? And most importantly of all, are you going to play Cyberpunk 2077 on November 19th at 2:00 am on Stadia? And if so, what will be your strategy for staying up that late? I need tips. I’m old. I usually go to bed at 9:00 pm. But hey, maybe an over-tired, hallucination state is the best way to play Cyberpunk 2077.
Music credits
- Bossa Antigua by Kevin MacLeod, Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3454-bossa-antigua, License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- Pump Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
