[PeterisP]

Working capital and cash flow - the majority of a board game's expenses are literally just the physical manufacturing of the items, you need to pay all that up front before you have anything to sell, and you need to guess how much you'll sell because you're only doing a single run, not a continuous manufacturing, so you can't easily make more if you run out and if you make too much, you're stuck with worthless inventory.

Preorders make total sense for board games because of these issues, so that you make as much as there is actual demand and get the money up front to fund the manufacturing, and especially for a reprint of a successful ones because then it's not a cat in the bag but customers can reasonably know what they're getting in the end.