Square Enix offers Deus Ex: Mankind Divided customers a way to 'augment' their pre-orders

midian182

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Square Enix has announced the release date and a unique pre-order campaign for its highly anticipated follow-up to 2010’s Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided will hit the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC on February 23, 2016, but if enough people pre-order the game it will be released four days earlier.

Regarding the release date, a European PlayStation blog post said: "The team has been working hard on the game, and even if its release is still a few months away, having a set date where we know you'll get a chance to experience the game first hand is a huge motivation for all of us."

The upcoming game’s pre-order campaign, referred to as ‘augment your pre-order’ by Square Enix, unlocks a new tier of bonuses as more copies of Mankind Divided are reserved. Each time a target number of pre-orders is reached, a new tier is unlocked that will allow fans to chose another bonus. If the final tier is reached, then the game will be released four days early.

Tier one of the pre-order plan offers three options that cater for stealthy (silencers, EMP grenades), aggressive (upgraded combat rifle, HE grenades) and even nostalgic (armour, coat and revolver from Human Revolution) players; tier two lets fans chose between a digital art book or a digital OST sampler with six tracks; tier three adds a new mission to Mankind Divided; and the fourth tier rewards consist of a digital comic book or a novella that follows characters from the games.

A collector’s edition of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided will also be released. This combines all the in-game content and rewards from the augment your pre-order campaign, along with a 9-inch Adam Jensen figurine, a limited edition steelbook and the Day One edition of the game.

With the recent backlash surrounding pre-orders, it looks as if Square Enix is trying to offer a new kind of incentive for more people to reserve Mankind Divided. However, it seems as if the campaign isn’t going down too well with gamers; the YouTube video below has already gained nearly three times the number of ‘thumbs downs’ as ‘thumbs ups’, and has received a slew of negative comments from viewers. Many people have called the the whole concept a "cynical cash grab."

If you want to know more about the augment your pre-order system, check out this video.

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The only thing I would pre-order is Fallout 4, and it has no incentive to do so so I'm just waiting
 
Thing is Dues ex is epic... why this is a bad think is beyond me, specially if you get a free 9" figure! im hoping the early release is for everyone.
 
Unless they publish actual milestones and exact sales data this is worse than offering a fixed set of bonuses, because they just can move the goalposts any time. Also, releasing it 3 days early is a gimmick too, because that's practically nothing (if they'd release it two months earlier, that would be something), and they will do it most likely anyway, just to make sure they catch any serious issues prior to the full release.
 
Thing is Dues ex is epic... why this is a bad think is beyond me, specially if you get a free 9" figure! im hoping the early release is for everyone.
You do not get that figure for free. It's part of the collectors' edition, which will obviously come with a heavy extra on the price tag, too.
 
After the train-wreck that was Thief "reboot" and outright trashy mobile cash grab Deus Ex: The Fall, I'm not going to be pre-ordering anything by Square Enix even if it came with the promise of a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow and a free pony. Even if you do purchase it post launch and "miss out", the option is (as usual) always there to "acquire" all three pre-order packs via "alternative" means, whilst the legal purchasers continue to be limited to only one pack, so pre-orderers are literally gaining nothing other than paying full price to be the usual "unpaid week one patch beta tester". Yet again, we see a publisher officially decry piracy whilst virtually encouraging it with pre-order *****-ism...

Pre-orders = Uninformed purchase decision
Post-launch orders = Informed purchase decision

Doesn't take long to figure out why all these pre-order bribes, launch day review embargoes, killing off playable demo's, etc, cr*p came into existence during the same era of consolization, bad ports and glorified mobile-style "pay early to win" bribes encroaching into mainstream AAA PC games...
 
Very much like Evolve DLC fragmentation, this will effectively cause a sh*tstorm from gamers not sure what they are getting when buying a game, while pirates will get a best package from PB. Good job Square Enix.
 
Thing is Dues ex is epic... why this is a bad think is beyond me, specially if you get a free 9" figure! im hoping the early release is for everyone.
This is bad because while you may get to pick the content you want, you're also picking much more content you DON'T want. They are withholding completed content from you. It should all just be included in the $60 game that you buy. The only version of this game that is going to have all the content unlocked is a pirated version. I contend that this pre-ordered non-sense leads to piracy.

I suggest watching this video, which I just watched last night. He lays out exactly why this is stupid:
 
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