I get your first paragraph, but that isn’t what you said.

The gaming industry may be the only environment where you can sell 8M copies of a non-existing product by just marketing it to a surreal levels...

I’m telling you this part is false.

Your second paragraph is also just cherry picking. You’re just choosing to describe one possible benefit of investing into something when a ton of investments don’t come with that benefit at all (see examples I already listed). Other benefits can be; reserving a product, funding the company in hopes for a better outcome product or because you believe in their product, being able to pre load a game (you can’t just say that’s not a benefit. It is, and a lack of confirmation of a pre load is a literal risk of that investment along with the quality of game). When people blindly pre order phones, cars, other mainstream tech, they’re paying top dollar. And they risk getting a product that is a pile of trash.