One of the best ways you can support TouchArcade is by doing your Amazon shopping through a TouchArcade affiliate link. We’ve set up the easy to remember toucharcade.com/amazon too if you want to type that in or bookmark it. We get a small percentage of anything you buy through any of these links, which otherwise would just go to financing Jeff Bezos’s experimental pizza bagel flavors or whatever else he’s up to now, and it goes a long way to supporting the site at no additional cost to you. These Amazon Items of the Day articles are all products we have used ourselves, and feel are things that the TouchArcade audience might be interested in!
Alright, so todays’s Amazon Item of the Day isn’t one specific item as much as it’s raising awareness of Amazon tweaking the way their discount structure works on video game preorders. Basically, if you’re a member of Amazon Prime and you preorder video games over there you get two pretty substantial benefits: If the price is lower anywhere Amazon adjusts their price and Prime members get 20% off anything they preorder. This took a typical $60 video game down to $48, which is a pretty zany deal as typically new games don’t go on sale and even if you’re looking at buying a reasonably new-ish game used from Game Stop you’re lucky to get much more than $5 off retail.
Well, all good things must come to an end, and Amazon recently announced they’re tweaking the way these preorder bonuses work. Instead of getting a flat 20% off, game preorders will be full price and instead you’ll just get $10 in Amazon credit for select games. So, you’re getting slightly less off the price of these game preorders and instead of paying less you’re just getting Amazon credit back. It’s not a huge deal if you do a lot of shopping on Amazon, as that $10 will just roll into your next purchase but if you rarely shop over there it is way better to just get $12 off instead of $10 back to spend later.
Amazon switches over from the 20% off to the $10 back program on August 28th, so as of this writing you’ve got a week left to look through their list of game preorders and grab whatever you feel like preordering. Historically, Amazon doesn’t actually charge your card until the item is shipped, so you could go nuts just preordering everything you’re even remotely interested in to lock in the discount, then just end up cancelling whatever you decide you don’t actually want to buy as reviews start to trickle out. That doesn’t seem like the worst strategy, provided you’re vigilant about actually following through on the cancelling.
Thanks for checking out today’s Amazon Item of the Day, and as mentioned before, even if you’re not interested in this particular product, buying things from Amazon by first visiting toucharcade.com/amazon is immensely helpful in supporting the site at no additional cost to you. Additionally, if you’re ever thinking of signing up for any Amazon services, we’d really appreciate if if you’d do it through these links:
- Amazon Prime Free Trial – Free shipping, Amazon Prime video, Kindle books, Twitch goodies, and a bunch of other stuff bundled into one subscription.
- Amazon Prime Student 6-month Trial – A slightly different flavor of Amazon Prime, exclusive to students that costs half as much.
- AmazonFresh Free Trial – Amazon’s grocery delivery service.
- Amazon Home Services – Amazon vetted handymen, house cleaning, and similar.
- Amazon Music Unlimited Free Trial – Amazon’s answe to Spotify, Apple Music, and other similar services.
- Try Audible and Get Two Free Audiobooks – If you’re even remotely interested in audiobooks, Audible is the best.
- Join Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited – Basically the text equivalent of an Audible membership.
- Download the free Kindle app – The best ebook platform, largely because unlike iBooks, your library is totally cross platform.
- Shop Amazon Cell Phones – Wireless phones and service plans without the hassle of dealing with going to a store.
If you want to take things a step further, you can check out our Patreon, but either way we just appreciate you sticking with us and continuing to both visit and contribute to the TouchArcade community over the years! If you’ve got a product you’re interested in seeing featured in an Amazon Item of the Day, don’t hesitate to reach out. The best way to get in contact with us is via email at [email protected] and be sure to include “Amazon Item of the Day" in the subject.
