What you're looking at here is not a complex scientific chart, or a guide to completing your income tax. This is how many different ways you can buy Watch Dogs and all the crap that comes with it.


(click "Expand" in the top-left corner to blow it up to a more readable size)

This kind of shit has long been a pet hate of mine, but in Watch Dogs' case, we're hitting new lows.


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Note that there's nothing new here. Most of this information was released last year. But images of this chart started doing the rounds today, and most of us hadn't seen it all laid out like this until they had, and hoo boy.

Of all the things wrong with it, I think the worst is just the embarrassment. Hey, gamers. This is what companies think of you. All your HYPE and message board partisanship and obsessive need to pre-order (though note most of these editions don't need a preorder, but come on) a game based on a title and a trailer has led us to this, the stage where a company like Ubisoft can lay this out, look at it with a straight face and think, yup, some of these suckers will pay up, just like they always have.


The saddest part is that there'll be people out there who have surveyed this chart and seen that they only have to buy four copies of the same game to get everything. Score!

Now, most of you won't be doing that. You'll probably just get a standard edition, play the game as it was intended and be done with it. I guess my problem with this kind of approach is the slippery slope it puts us on. For now, most of the crap being kept in separate editions is garbage like an "iconic cap".


But how long until games start segregating major characters or important sequences between editions, with the explicit implication that you're meant to buy multiple copies of the game, like some form of expensive digital gashapon?