Video: Dragon’s Dogma Dark Arisen Now Available For Pre-Order On Nintendo Switch

Oh no, you completely exposed me!

Really, though, you’re compltely missing the point here. I never even compared “digital version” with “physical version” in my previous comment. I only compared “digital version with preorder” and “digital version without preorder”. And yes, if someone is going to buy the digital version of a game anyways, they might as well go ahead and preorder it, because a preorder with preload does allow them to play the game earlier than, let’s say, if they bought the game on release day and would still have to download it before they could play it, which could take all day for people with slow internet connections.

“Physical version” vs “digital version” isn’t even a point I brought up at all, but even if I did, I would still argue that on average, digital version buyers get to play their game earlier than physical version buyers, assuming retailers don’t break the street day on the physical version and assuming preload is supported. Most retailers don’t even open until like 8 AM, so realistically, people don’t get access to physical versions of games until around that time on release day, whereas people with the digital version could theoretically start playing from midnight the same day if preloaded. Sure, it’s just eight hours earlier, but I never even said anything about “weeks earlier”, I literally just said “earlier”. Even then, your argument is also assuming that all people live in large cities and have easy access to retailers that sell the games in the first place, which just isn’t the case. Some people live in rural areas with no retailer anywhere near them, and the only way for them to get physical versions in the first place is by ordering them. I grew up in a rural area, so I’m speaking from first-hand experience here. The next major city from me was 50 km away, so I was pretty much stuck to ordering online from Amazon or similar, and no, post delivery services in areas like that do not tend to be fast or consistent, so on average, if a game released on a Friday and I ordered it on Amazon back in the days (even if Amazon shipped it on the Wednesday or Thursday before release), I wouldn’t get it until Saturday or Monday that week. So for people in areas like that, we can easily add another day to the equation, making it one day and eight hours.

Sure, still not a huge difference to a lot of people, but for others it is. Some people just want to play a game as early as they possibly can, and that’s fine. Especially in this day and age where games often get spoiled within hours after release, it’s a totally understandable desire for people to want to play games as early as possible. Personally, I grew up with physical games and like collecting, so I always prefer them when available, even if it means waiting an extra day or two. Since I already have a huge backlog of Switch games and work on week days (meaning I don’t even get to play games until after work), a few days of extra wait time don’t usually affect me too much anymore. I’ve also moved to a big city, so games are way more available now and post delivery is also way more reliable here. For all those reason, I will probably keep buying physical versions for as long as they are available. That doesn’t mean I can’t empathize with people who prefer digital versions or only have access to them.

Also dragging Anthem into this discussion really isn’t even worth the effort. Noone was even talking about that game in the first place. Just because Anthem had horrible preorder policies doesn’t mean there aren’t any good, valid reasons for preordering other games digitally.