I can’t remember ever having pre-ordered a game in my life before.

This month, I’ve done it twice.

The first was Grand Theft Auto 4. All the previews I’ve seen made me a little leery of it at first. I was a little worried tht the game seemed to be veering toward tedious realism for the sake of realism and away from the anarchic fun that’s made the series so iconic and widely-imitated.

Then I remembered that it’s Grand Theft bloody Auto, for crying out loud. There’s exactly no chance that Rockstar will fuck it up, and the game’s website seems to indicate that its predecessors’ nihilism and cynical, none-more-black sense of humour has survived intact. Sold.

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Secondly and seemingly more controversially, there’s Rock Band. I can’t remember a game I’ve anticipated more eagerly. My enthusiasm for the Guitar Hero games has recently been boosted by thrashing through them in co-operative mode with my last-born, and I’ve even gotten a fair amount of fun over slightly broken, crappily-designed hateful misogynyfest Guitar Hero III. So the thought of being able to get all the kids together and form Garston’s answer to the Patridge Family… well. It’ll even be worth having to be the sodding bassist.

I’ve been waiting six months for news of Rock Band’s European release and I’m far from the only one. Which goes some way towatd explaining why the Internet exploded when it was announced that it would launch with an RRP of £180 - pretty much just substituting a pound sign for the dollar on its US price tag.

“Sheer greed!” cried the masses. “Rip-off!” “Buy real instruments!” “Boycott the game!” “Boycott EA!” “Boycott EVERYTHING in the WHOLE WORLD!” Teeth were duly gnashed, garments were duly rended and the uncaring sky was duly howled at by hundreds of hacked-off would-be customers.

(Incidentally, there are very few internet discussion participants more annoying than the smug fucks who turn up in Guitar Hero or Rock Band threads and tell you you ought to spend the money on a real instrument. Just fuck OFF. Do you go out of your way to tell people talking about Pro Evo Soccer that they ought to play real football? Do you go out of your way to tell people talking about Outrun that they ought to spend the money on a real Ferrari? Do you go out of your way to tell people talking about Call Of Duty that they ought to join the real army? No, of course you fucking don’t. “Buy a real guitar!” translates to “How dare you enjoy this game! How DARE you even get a hint of a taste of a suggestion of what it might be like to be a guitar God without putting months of frustrating joyless practice in first. I play the guitar, nyah nyah nyah, I play the guitar so I’m better than you, I’m better than you, I’M better than YOU!”

Fuckers. Anyway…)

Personally, I always thought that the people expecting a sub-£100 price were living in denial, and was anticipating paying something between £120 and £150 given a) the game’s manufactured in the US and shipping a big box o’instruments over the Atlantic is pricey, b) VAT, c) generally higher costs in Europe leading to pricier warehousing, distribution and everyhing else, d) that EA can’t bank on the dollar mantaining its prodigiously weak value against the pound and e) yeah, a certain amount of greed. So the £140 (£133 with a sneaky discount code) that Play are offering the game and instruments for is pretty much exactly what I was braced for.

Don’t misunderstand, I’m genuinely embarassed at paying a hundred and thirty quid for a game. I can’t escape the feeling that I’m emblematic of Western society’s fall into shameless greedy consumerist depravity. You watch, it won’t be long before I’m heading down to the vomitorium to watch two monkeys have a knife-fight in a vat of cornflour pudding.

On the other hand, I really want to play Wanted Dead Or Alive. So, you know.

Plus, I’m not really paying for it - it’s actually a gift from the good people of Pacific Poker’s $1-$2 no-limit hold ‘em ring games. It’d be positively immoral to spend gambling winnings on anything but selfish gratification and bored lazy depravity, wouldn’t it?

So yeah. It’s an obscene amount of money to spend when there are millions of people in desperate need. But what’s the point of being in the top 10% of the planet’s population that hold 90% of the world’s wealth if you can’t play a plastic drumkit while Rome burns, eh?

I’ve already booked the 23rd May off work. So if society could put off imploding until after the end of the long weekend, that’d be awesome.