I've become a bit disenchanted with Early Access games. The problem is that, by the time the game actually launches, you have played it to death and will probably not play it again.
OPINION TIME:
The problem with the industry is money...the almighty dollar is the be-all and end-all of all gaming development, especially with AAA titles. The problem is that, a while ago, companies realised that gaming development has a very erratic cash-flow. Once you launch a title, you will be getting a healthy flow of cash, but once the hype is gone, so does the money. And seeing as game development started taking longer and longer, that initial cashflow wasn't enough to sustain the business until the next release. The answer to this problem came in the paradigm shifting invention of things like micro-transactions, season passes, paid-for DLC content, and eventually early access.
A game requires massive investment; and investment that the developer may not have at the time they start. So they have to either sell their souls to a publishing house, get angel investors, Kickstarter or Early Access. These methods ensure that they generate a cashflow while developing their game. From a business point, I think it's a stroke of genius.
Pre-orders, on the other hand, are mainly done for big AAA titles; games that already have the capital investment to keep them afloat until game release. But, the cost of game creation and the necessary marketing to actually be successful has balloon so much that the sales figures may not be enough to provide return on the initial investment. And every single investor worries only about ROI, margin, Break-even points and stuff like that. So, again out of pure necessity, game developers came up with pre-orders, where they can hike up the price and provide some "incentive" for the buyer to pay for the higher margin game.
It's all business. It's cold, calculated and passionless...
Now us, the consumers, are the ones that are impacted by their decisions. We now have to basically pay for ridiculously increasing development costs and over-hyping marketing campaigns.
