Is that abnormal or something? The mall by my house had like 3 arcades in it in 1992 lol.
Handing a five year old a stack of quarters to spend a significant amount of time playing the game that is the reason for ESRB ratings? Ya I'd say that was unusual. I was 14 when I started playing the SNES / Sega version of MK, and I never had that much money to play MK2 in the arcade.
Go ahead and name one benefit to consumers pre-ordering that isn't some "bonus" skin/character bs.
Besides being assured of having the game on release day? (Hell, I've pre-ordered from Amazon so I won't even have to leave my house for it). Even if Goro was the only benefit, so what? I haven't paid a cent for it yet, and won't until it ships, so the pre-order literally costs me nothing, and I'm going to buy it anyway, so Goro is just a nice bonus.
Nothing wrong with their marketing? You obviously haven't seen their collector's edition, breh. That would be $180.00 for a sub par statue you can get on clearance in 6 months and a golden scorpion skin. If they were smart, they'd offer two editions: Scorpion or Sub-Zero. But no, instead we get this single, overpriced chump Scorpion edition for a game that will be $20 or less by the end of the year. That won't stop people like some in this very thread from buying it, unfortunately.
I have seen the collectors edition. Doesn't interest me. Still nothing wrong with it; to some people it will be worth the $180, and so they'll pay it. For others, it won't be. See that's the thing with free individuals in a capitalist economy; everyone gets to decide how much value they place on whatever, and they can pay it or not.
You might be right about the statue being available for much less later. Not sure why someone would spend $120 for a statue and then and then sell it later for $20, but hey, some people aren't very logical. (Unless you mean new it will be less).
I think MKX will be selling for new for more than $20 only 8 months after release, but regardless your point is irrelevant. To some people having it when its out is of more value than 8 months from its release. Maybe they want 8 months more to learn the game b/c they are going to tournaments. Maybe they want to have as much time playing against others before online thins out.
So your assertion that its unfortunate that people will pay $180 for the collectors edition or preorder just to get Goro is pretty silly, since you don't get to decide for someone else how much they value anything. I'm sure there are things you spend money on that I would think are stupid and would never do so myself.
Guy says statue is cheap without actually handling it.
Guy forgets the special edition also gets you extra skins, access to the dlc characters, art book, etc.
Also, that edition is optional. For the people that want it. Don't want it, don't buy it. The advantage of pre-ordering is this:
Say you don't have sixty bucks on hand for the standard version of the game. All right. If you have five bucks, you can pre-order the game. Now, you can put money down on the game as often as you like, until it is paid off. So instead of spending your sixty at one time, you can budget and spend twenty or ten every so often until release date. In fact, if you pre-order the game now, and drop ten bucks a week on it, you would have it paid off before the release date.
Pre-ordering allows people who work within a budget to get games easier.
Although I'd argue that if you need to budget for a $60 game you should probably re-evaluate the financial priorities in your life.