[angersock]

If the market evolves to not sustain AAA games, thems the breaks.

I'm not following this argument. Both Wolfire and Mojang (Notch's company) sell games. They also provide free demos but their primary income comes from selling copyrighted works, not donations.

So, to a point, they are effectively living off "donations" until they ship 1.0, right? Preorders are effectively donations to continue development.

[jiggy2011]

afaik, pre-orders give you access to the "beta" version which is still very playable and will also give you access to the finished version when it is done.

All you get for free is an older version where you cannot do multiplayer or save your game. Basically a demo.