2K Shaft Early PS3 BioShock 2 Preorders

And so my steadily growing bitter disappointment at the hollowed out corpse of BioShock begins. Amazon are letting you preorder the BioShock 2 Special Edition. This version comes with loads of awesome stuff like a $10 discount and a skin for your PS3 Home character. That is unless you already preordered the game from a different outlet in which case 2K decided you shouldn’t get that.

To be clear, my anger here is one of principal. I paid $100 to GameStop for the PS3 version of the Special Edition. How is it the (singular) Special Edition if I could have waited, spent less money and got a different Special Edition that comes with more stuff!?

When I heard the PS3 version (which is the version I’ll be getting as it’ll work on my UK PS3) came with a fun little Home outfit I was genuinely a little bit happy. It’s a small, worthless thing but it’s something I could play with for a  while and I heard it was included in the Special Edition, which I had already preordered. Yey! This is the first, and likely last, time I’ve preordered a game. I’m not really a materialistic guy, nor do I usually pay much attention to these extra bits of crap that come with games and their various editions. I normally just brush them off as the worthless bits of tat they are.

My love of the first BioShock and my enjoyment of real vinyl made it hard for me to avoid wanting Special Edition, which comes with an art book, poster and a real, playable record. This fact combined with the game costing around the same for the Special Edition in the US as it does to buy the standard edition in the UK made my decision. I preordered it last year with some money I got for my birthday.

Finding out that depending on where you pay your 50%-more-than-normal quantity of money for the apparent same thing (with no way of knowing which retailer will have what offer until it’s too late) has struck a nerve. It’s this kind of petty crap that is continually pushed on us gamers (though as somebody disinterested in most preorders, the idea of retailer specific extras being announced after preorders are being taken is something I’ve not really noticed before). We’re taking the brunt from the developer’s and publisher’s greed and it just sucks. No, most people (I would guess the vast majority) don’t care about some random Home outfit, but for me it’s the principal of the situation that’s got my face right-proper grumpy.

Still, it makes sense from a business perspective.