You don't know much about pre-ordering, do you Brendan? First, you don't pay till it ships, so it doesn't have any effect at all on sales of current games (I bought Journey this week, actually pre-ordered it last week). Second, with Amazon's low price guarantee, you get the lowest price it hits before it ships. So if you've pre-ordered and it drops to $39.99 for a one-day sale a week before the game comes out, you get the lower price. If they add on a $10 credit to be used for another purchase, you get that too. So by pre-ordering early, you avail yourself of all the possible discounts, without having to watch for them. Finally, if it gets close to release date and the previews aren't looking too positive or you're not happy with the price, you can just cancel the pre-order. No loss, no charge. In the case of Assassin's Creed, they have a history of improving the game with each new iteration, so yes, I'll reward them for that. Mostly, my pre-order for ACIII (which I did while I was writing this, as well as pre-ordering MOH:Warfighter) is to ensure I get the best price on launch day without having to scour the internet for sales. I could care less about the usual DLC schwag.