What happened to all the demos?

Whach

Whach

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Dec 22, 2011
Messages
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They seem to be few and far between nowadays. It is an all or nothing proposition =/ Even if there is a game demo, it seems to be released waay after a game is out in the marketplace. oh I remember the days gone past.....
 
They found that on the whole, games sell less when they release a demo first.
Prospective buyers get to see it isnt what they want before they part with cash, so there are much less demos now.
 
There's recently released Castlevania LoS demo!!! This game kicks so much ass.
 
It's cheaper and easier to make flashy trailers and contract reviews. People eat those 2 things up. I prefer demo's. I would like to play the game and make up my own mind.
 
Dion said:
It's cheaper and easier to make flashy trailers and contract reviews. People eat those 2 things up. I prefer demo's. I would like to play the game and make up my own mind.
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So would I. Would have been useful for train wreck that was Sim City 2013......
 
Well .. there was a lot of games that had a demo but it was the best part of the game. You got it only to be disappointed.
 
Alphas are the new Demo's & Beta's are the new game. Then after you buy it, they give you a patch or DLC to "finalize" the game.

A sad state of affairs I tell ya.....
 
This is why I'll wait for the price to drop to an acceptable level ($50 - $60 NOT!) and reading user reviews before buying a new game or unknown game. I don't play multiplayer so waiting to play a game, has no real impact on me.
 
I think that demo's were replaced by torrents and youtube walkthroughs
 
Whach said:
So would I. Would have been useful for train wreck that was Sim City 2013......
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Heh, playing the beta is what made me decide to preorder Simcity. Disabling a bunch of shit, allowing only a set number of people to play at a time and putting a 1 hr time limit hid most of the glaring flaws that were painfully clear in the full game.

But yea I mostly demo games for myself. If I like, I buy. Sometimes I will wait until the price drops though if I don't think it warrants $40+.
 
silk186 said:
I think that demo's were replaced by torrents and youtube walkthroughs
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Yeah pretty much. Why bother with a very small segment of the game which for all I know is the best part of it and the rest completely sucks? Most Let's Players will go through the whole game and often talk about issues in their commentaries. Or break off and make a "RAGE" video if it's really bad.
 
silk186 said:
I think that demo's were replaced by torrents and youtube walkthroughs
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I used to do that but at some point I realized my taste is extremely narrow and my judgment is almost perfect. It is quite possible for me tell if a game is worth my money only by watching a few trailers and/or gameplay videos.

I'd still prefer to have all these AND demos but who wouldn't.

The only time I felt burned was with BRINK. Everything was almost as expected but I've never seen a game with worse menus. What is wrong with these guys...

All these "Lets play" guys are complete noobs. Every single one of them.
 
Gilbert_pwns said:
They figured out they can sell them as Alphas and Betas.
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I honestly don't mind it. There are some games I'm pretty confident I'm going to enjoy, and so long as I trust the developer, I'm getting cheaper games when I buy them in their "alpha" state. If I want to hold off until the game's gone final, I can do that too. At that point there's quite a lot of feedback from people who've gone through all the early releases and have a lot to talk about.

This isn't a trend you should expect to last very long, though. Developers and publishers are still playing around with different monetization schemes and are going to keep changing the landscape to keep consumers disoriented.
 
lol demos.. people just install illegaly all new games from pirate bay and try out.. shame... when did it get bad like in oldays to promote your games? never understood why it died out...
 
DonutThief said:
So I take it you sat and watched "every single one of them". That must've taken a very long time.
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Oh please. Can you at least suggest a "Let's play" video of an FPS/RTS game where the host isn't a complete noob?
 
Mortuus said:
lol demos.. people just install illegaly all new games from pirate bay and try out.. shame... when did it get bad like in oldays to promote your games? never understood why it died out...
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There isn't a whole lot of confidence in these products. Demos have their own costs, but it seems unlikely that doing Steam free weekends has any particularly notable cost to it (though I don't know whether Valve charges for bandwidth usage or not — it probably behooves them not to charge in many cases or to charge very little).

Publishers are essentially looking for a hit-and-run model: they want the cash and they don't seem to care particularly whether you're satisfied or not. It's a pretty reasonable short-term strategy, but a pretty terrible long-term one.
 
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