Dark Souls III Digital Pre-Orders Open For A Limited Time

From Software's upcoming Dark Souls 3 is due for release on April 12 this spring for the Xbox One, PS4 and PC, and digital pre-orders for the game have gone live. What's more is that each platform has their own special pre-order bonus, but some are available only for a limited time.

According to the press release that Bandai Namco Entertainment sent out, the game will come with different items for each pre-order on its respective platform. So for Xbox One owners when they pre-order Dark Souls 3 they will receive a free copy of the Xbox 360 version of the original Dark Souls from back in 2011. For anyone who managed to miss out on the original but thinks that the third game in the series looks like it could be righteous fun, you will have an option to get a free copy of the first game for a limited time and it will work as a backwards compatible title on the Xbox One. So technically you're getting two games for the price of one when you pre-order on Microsoft's eighth-gen console.

Steam owners will get the next best offering, when those who pre-order the game that already have the original Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition and Dark Souls 2 in their inventory will receive a $5 discount on the pre-order of Dark Souls 3. In addition to this the Steam version of the game will come with a free digital soundtrack.

The PlayStation 4 version is also available for pre-order from the PlayStation Store. The game will come with a free soundtrack for Dark Souls 3 and not much else, save for a dashboard theme.

In addition to the standard pre-orders for the digital edition of the hack-and-slash RPG, Bandai Namco also revealed that you can get a digital deluxe edition of From Software's upcoming title. The digital deluxe edition contains all of the base game and the free digital soundtrack, along with a dashboard theme for PS4 owners. But for the price of $84.99 the package also includes the season pass. Now they don't specify exactly what's in the season pass but we can assume it's going to contain enough DLC to last throughout 2016 and possibly 2017 (or at least we can hope).

Dark Souls 3 is easily one of the most anticipated games of the year and it's releasing within the same window as Uncharted 4: A Thief's End for the PS4. I do wonder if Bandai is a little bit afraid given that Uncharted is a powerhouse that can sell on par to Call of Duty or Super Mario. While Dark Souls obviously has its own built-in audience, it's a whole different thing going up against a sales juggernaut. Crystal Dynamics and Microsoft learned that first hand when they attempted to have Rise of the Tomb Raider go head-to-head against Fallout 4 and the game suffered the first week out when millions of people hurried out to buy Bethesda's open-world FPS-RPG instead of the action-platformer.

Nevertheless, with the upgraded combat system and the additional graphical enhancements and some of the wildest bosses I've ever seen in a video game to date, Dark Souls 3 has an opportunity to really carve out a strong market for itself across the PC, Xbox One and PS4 this generation. If they can escape the launch week without any major bugs or glitches then it should bode well for them the first quarter out.

You can learn more about the limited digital pre-orders for the game by paying a visit to the official website.