Pre-order bonuses are inherently bad because it is of no benefit to the customer in any way to put down money for a game sight unseen and the use of psychological manipulation, creating "haves" and "have-nots" in order to achieve this is a disingenuous business practice, creating short-term gains for the industry at the expense of its longer term reputation with its customers. As well as the wider issue that, as I have stated, games are now more regularly released in a broken state or alternatively trailers for games (see Watch_Dogs, Aliens: Colonial Marines, Infamous Second Son) use false footage, outright lying to people in order to acquire pre-orders.

You mentioned companies going under, I can't understand why you don't see that underhanded business practices like this are a contributing factor. Too many people have been burned now.