Deluxe Effect

For years now publishers have been churning out multiple editions of each game, each one with its own features that they want to sell to you for something like £999. From statues to soundtracks, DLC to dongles, publishers want you to shell out extra cash in whatever way they can. But is it worth it?

Let's take Watch Dogs 2. It launched with 4 main physical options, the base game, the Gold Edition, the Amazon exclusive Steel Book and the San Francisco Edition.

I got myself the San Francisco Edition.

So, what can you get in these editions? Well the base game is quite obvious, it contains the bare bones, sometimes individual retailers will throw in an in-game cosmetic to sweeten the deal but other than that you pay the least and in essence get the least.

Steel Books are a strange one and they aren't a recent occurrence either. You can often pay quite a bit extra for a pretty box, maybe a little bit of exclusive DLC, but as a rule you can't expect much more than tin box.

Uncharted's roughed up Steel Book is one of my favourites.

 Gold editions normally include the season pass, often with a little discount off buying them separately, simple as that.

Then we get onto the special editions, Ubisoft's bread and butter. These editions include, statues, soundtracks, art-books, you name it and it's probably in a special edition. Oh, but do remember you could easily buy three base games for the same amount most of the time. Considering games now can start off at £60 it can get pretty ridiculous if you ask me.

Watch Dogs' Marcus does look pretty slick though.

I’m not one to completely snuff the idea of a deluxe edition however, my problem comes in when the price is so high. Games such as Mass Effect: Andromeda launching later this month are prime examples of where reason goes completely out of the window by offering a £140 bundle of the deluxe edition of the game and a remote-control Nomad ND1, a vehicle used in the game.

Doesn’t all this seem a little ridiculous? £140 for a game you can already pre-order for less than £45? Publishers are slapping a deluxe label on their games and offering them to consumers at ridiculous prices. Then again it is pretty hard to not want to pour out the contents of my wallet when Square Enix offer anything with Kingdom Hearts written on it…

Maybe they're just a little too tempting