What are your thoughts on collector editions for a video game? When is it a good buy or just another piece of junk that will just collect dust in your closet?
Many gaming companies put in the time, effort and money to give us gamers something to collect along side our games. Usually these collector editions run around $70 to $100 dollars, if not more. Instead of playing $60 dollars for a game, what makes us want to pay more for a few extra goodies? Is it loyalty to the game and its company? Could it be because you’re a collecting nut?
When Halo 3 was announced with three editions, I was working at GameStop. To get people to reserve the Legendary Edition was hard and easy at times, just depended on the gamer. Some customers laughed at the fact that you get a helmet with the game. Others wondered if you could actually put it on (which would have been nice). Then we had those who, with no questions asked, wanted the legendary edition and were willing to pay the $100. A lot of the customers went with the collector’s edition, which gave them an extra disc for ten dollars more. Once the game was released, my store was packed with Legendary editions. Those boxes were pretty large and took up a lot of space. Personally, if you’re going to have a collector’s edition that unique, why would you have so many copies of it? It made it seem that anyone could pick up the Legendary edition without a reserve yet the collector’s edition for Bioshock had so few. With Bioshock, we didn’t have enough for all of our reserves. I’m kicking myself for not getting it since it came with a little Big Daddy figure. Back to Halo, during the midnight release we start getting complaints on the collector’s edition of Halo 3. Seems when they were packing it, they didn’t do a great job. The nub that holds the game in place was either broken or just didn’t work at all. This caused the game disc to become scratched during shipment. We had so many returned that we started to run out of copies while we still had Legendary editions well in stock. We had so many left over in fact, that a year or so later, the helmets themselves became penny’d out and we sold the game separately.
Now back to Bioshock for a minute, the collector’s edition that we got for that game was great but some of the figures were broken. This made returns hard since we had few copies of the game to begin with. The PC version alone we only had two copies and we were not getting any more.
Point here is that companies need to make sure their product is one hundred percent ready to be shipped without any part of it being faulty, especially when quantities are limited. If you’re going to have something great in your collector’s edition, make sure supplies are limited so it makes the buyer feel like they’re getting something special that only a few own.
Terry, over at Game Couch, brought up a great point when it comes to DLC and collector editions. He mentions Batman: Arkham Asylum and how the collector edition came with DLC content only found with the collector’s edition. Soon after the release of the game, that very same DLC was found online and anyone could purchase it. Why have exclusive DLC content in a collector’s edition just to find out that its released later on. Sure, you get the content a few days or weeks early, but if that’s not the case, why bother? Exclusive content should mean just that.
Both @MarcinKawa and @Dryden88 over on Twitter both agree that a collector’s edition is a rip off and not worth the money when the only special item you get is a small book, piece of cloth or some other cheap item. Most CE’s are around ten dollars more and when you go to buy a CE you expect to get something worth the price. Most collector editions out there are simply not worth it and not all games need a special edition to make it better or to attract more attention.
Personally, there’s only a few CE’s that I’ve perchance and I feel are worth it to this day. Granted, I’ve only just recently displayed my Halo 3 helmet, but I’m still glad that I got it. Mass Effect 2 wasn’t really worth the money, since best bet I could just watch the behind the scenes on YouTube and Soul Calibur IV came with a nice t-shirt and a few other goodies that made it worth it.
Lunar Silver Star Story Complete and Lunar 2 Eternal Blue Complete for the PsX both came as a collector’s edition. These two items feel more as a collector’s item, just like my retro games. It’s nice to see that some collector’s edition hold the test of time, even if I’m the only one that thinks so.
That could be what drives people to always buy the collector’s edition. Who cares what the item is, they simply like collecting items to add to their video game collection. Even so, I still believe that CE’s really need to be worth the money and come with something pretty fantastic and exclusive.
