Pre-orders and YOU!

My suggestion: Never pre-order software.

I have never seen a game that was completely sold out on release day, including Halo 2. It's easy to print out millions of copies of these discs, because it's such a tried-and-true industrial process. As a result, you can always find a copy of a game somewhere on launch day, even if you have to go to Wal-Mart, Sears or some other non-traditional game retailer. Pre-ordering games is a low-down dirty scam foisted on the gaming public by publishers eager to create the perception of scarcity where none exists.

Hardware is a different matter.

Building consoles is an intricate business, and every new console requires new manufacturing techniques. So hardware launches of major consoles are always going to be skimpy. But those hardware launches have become so dicey that, for the most part, your pre-order still doesn't guarantee you a system. In the case of GameStop with the Wii and PS3, all your pre-order buys you is the right to stand in line on the 17th or 19th and wait to see if the store got enough of the systems in stock to satisfy the number of pre-orders sold. And how did GameStop decide how many pre-orders to sell? It guessed. It was an educated guess, but a guess nonetheless. They might still not know how many consoles they're getting. Hell, Nintendo and (particularly) Sony might not know how many consoles they'll have for launch.

Bottom line, stay away from pre-orders. They're unnecessary for software and not guaranteed for hardware.