I am a pretty avid and hardcore console gamer personally, but I have never once preordered a title. Even for the games that I literally can not wait to get my hands on, I still feel no need to preorder.
As someone who mainly enjoys story driven, single player experiences - due largely to the fact that there's just something about a 12 year old, high on sugar water, screaming profane language in my ear that sort of breaks immersion - I simply don't want the extras the publishers offer up as incentive. Sure there are times when you get a good chunk of story missions or something substantial along those lines, but in almost all cases the extra goodies feel like stuff the devs have ripped out of the once complete product or in game items/weapons/costumes that I don't feel I've earned because they have just been given to me. I don't want a special rocket launcher to just appear in my inventory, I want to find that in game through exploration or something like that, not buy it at GameStop.
Last time I checked there were plenty of copies of any game I've ever wanted at a number of different stores, all in quite close proximity. So if you don't want the extra goodies handed to you and there is plenty of stock ready and waiting for your money, then why pre-order? Possibly showing support for smaller studio and indie releases (which happen to not be the games I personally favor), maybe for those that live in smaller towns where inventory might be an issue, early access to a beta release?
So for this week's open forum we want to know if you ever pre-order games. Does pre-ordering titles just feed into the idea of pulling content from the title that should have been in there in the first place? Or is it simply a way for hardcore fans to get every last bit of content and show their support for the developers and games they love the most?