Almost every large release now offers something extra for committing before launch. The bonus is inexpensive to produce, and what the publisher gets back is information rather than money.
Early commitment is a demand signal
A publisher planning a launch needs an estimate of how many players will arrive on day one, and that estimate drives server capacity, support staffing and marketing spend.
Preorder volume is the earliest hard signal available, because it reflects people who acted rather than people who answered a question about intent.
A small bonus increases the number of players who convert intent into a recorded commitment, which sharpens the forecast that everything else is planned against.
The incentive is cheap by construction
Bonuses are usually cosmetic items, in-game currency or early access to content that already exists in the build, so the marginal cost of granting one is close to nothing.
That economics is why bonuses rarely include anything affecting gameplay balance. A meaningful advantage would draw criticism worth more than the preorders it generated.
Cosmetic bonuses also serve as visible markers in multiplayer, which advertises the game to other players at no additional cost to the publisher.
Storefront placement rewards the numbers
Digital stores rank and feature titles partly on measurable interest, and preorders contribute to that visibility before any player has an opinion about the game.
A title that trends on a store page in the weeks before release reaches shoppers who were not looking for it, compounding the initial demand.
The bonus therefore buys placement as much as it buys individual sales, which is why campaigns cluster in the final weeks rather than at announcement.
Preordering shifts risk to the buyer
A buyer who commits before reviews exist is paying for an unfinished, unreviewed product. If the launch goes badly, the publisher already holds the commitment.
That asymmetry is the fair criticism of the practice, and it is why consumer sentiment toward preordering has cooled among experienced players over the past decade.
Digital preorders are cancellable on most platforms before release, which reduces the risk considerably, though many buyers never revisit the decision once it is made.
The practice is drifting toward editions
Publishers increasingly fold preorder incentives into tiered editions, where the bonus is bundled with expansion access or early play rather than offered alone.
Tiering serves the same forecasting purpose while raising average revenue per buyer, since the decision becomes which edition rather than whether to commit.
The underlying logic does not change. The publisher is buying certainty about launch week, and the item in the box is simply the price of that certainty.