The last time I pre-ordered a game was Final Fantasy VII for the PlayStation back in 1997. After that, I just have not been into any games, or looking forward to any, that were worth putting money down upfront for.
I understand why people want to but as we moved to a digital era, meaning less "feelies" such as shirts, toys, physical items, as a thank you for pre-ordering, we get more and more digital stuff.
Sadly, a lot of game developers give that stuff to all the other players at some point too, making pre-ordering kind of pointless if you ask me. If you get an exclusive skin for pre-ordering but then the game has a major hiccup later and the publisher gives that pre-order skin away as an apology, then that is not fair to those that pre-ordered, at least not in my opinion.
Just like games like Fortnite that, now used to, have skins and items exclusive to the season, they are moving to a limited exclusivity on that item or skin. It puts a lot less pressure on gamers to play the game overall.
With pre-orders most are only offering 24 hours early access. What is that? My luck I would be working that day and miss out on it if I were to pre-order something.
Pre-orders as they are today make no sense.
They 100% don't make any sense. I can understand if a game plans on having a AH like shop where players can sell items they get, then having exclusive pre order skins would actually mean something. But like you said most games are now moving away from the "inclusive" part.
It is ridiculous how they have done pre-orders since the Xbox and PlayStation 2 era. That seems to be the first generation where anything of substance was not provided to pre-ordering fans. I can't remember how many times I saw a pre-order on PSOne or Sega Saturn that came with a shirt, related pins, sometimes even a small art book here or there (some of these were store specific pre-order bonuses and may not have been official).
The point is, pre-orders used to mean something. Now they seem like a way for developers/publishers to offset the last bit of development/delivery with fans paying up for a skin that will be available to everyone within a year of the game release, or an icon on their profile (also probably limited time wise, because, why not?).
Even just posters and that. There used to always be some momento that the player got instead of all this digital crap. Now it seems the only way to get something you can actually touch is buy pre ordering the collectors edition.