Celton88: Would you ever pay full price for a game? And if so, what is the criteria? Because it isn't that you don't have already great games in your account that you paid a relative pittance for. So is it because you want to be a part of the first wave? Do you want to support the developers? Something else?
I would, and I have. I do it when I want to play the damn game.
I don't care about the "first wave". Having playtested several games, the meaningful "first wave" is really beta. Everything else is bullshit marketing. And I don't have offline friends who are into videogames fullstop, not to mention a specific videogame at a specific time.
I really don't like the notion of "supporting the devs" as it's used in sales culture -- it kinda >implies a weird mix of e-begging and charity. Look, impersonal-you, devs set the list price, and if you can't pay the fucking list price, you don't get to play the fucking game just yet. They are neither asking for nor getting charity, they just made a good fucking game and you fucking bought it. It's no more "supporting the devs" than buying booze at the corner store is "supporting small businesses".
Finally, holy fuck how can you people even call yourself gamers if you think all games are interchangeable. "I already have a game, why do I need another one." Why indeed.
However:
All 3d action goes on the wishlist because of the potential controls issues and motion sickness. I bought The Witness (a puzzle game!) on release and it nearly killed me.
All survival games go on the wishlist to see if they have balance issues.
The last game I bought at full price was Iconoclasts. It looked awesome and I wanted to play it on release, which I did. I ended up hating it for the plot and characters, not for its production values. It wasn't my personal failure of judgment, and it wasn't related to the lack of reviews, so the fact that the game ended up sucking is not evidence against buying games at full price or on release / late preorder.
My worst on-release purchase was Cuphead (it had a 10% discount tho) - I can't advance in that game at all. Sure it's pretty, but the prettiness doesn't justify the $$ when the content is only accessible on youtube for free. This was more of a mistake, as I should've probably waited for all that "brutal and unforgiving" shit to surface.
I am now looking forward to Wildfire, Eitr, Hornet DLC and especially Children of Morta. I'll buy each of them on release (provided they don't get released on the same day, of course).