Read a study a few weeks ago stating games with demos sells a lot less than games without because players will have to buy the thing to know how it is.. With the demo they can have that feel for free hence not buying it.

Do you mean that lecture on demos at DICE? If so the data he used needs a lot of clarification. He studied only Xbox 360 games where XBLA indie games are required to have a demo and big AAA games are not, the latter is bound to sell a lot more than the former.

I'm not saying he's wrong, but without knowing his full criteria for collecting data I can't say he's right either.

I wouldn't download a huge demo even if it were available. Nowadays it's easier to just watch a "Let's play" on YouTube or a video review of the game. Maybe a demo would be too large, considering that new games often span several DVDs?

Demos have, more often than not, dissuaded me from buying the game. There have been some very notable exceptions where borderline interest has been turned into a day one purchase, but yeah. It does take a lot of confidence in your product to think that the demo is going to be beneficial.

As said, usually demos can hurt sales rather than help them. There's one game in particular that made this especially true, which was the Xbox 360 "Bionic Commando" from Capcom. So many gamers hated it even while they made the game look so exciting to play, and once the demo was released, it revealed the clunkyness of the controls and the linearity of the maps, and voice acting, and blah blah blah blah blah. And despite how we want to think, as individuals, groups take notice and act in a group mentality, in individual capacity, meaning even if Demos have a history of doing good, show one bad one, get the backlash like Capcom did, suddenly every game developer stopped to watch and saw the potential for something to go wrong. Demos are still being made of course but this is probably the one game that killed released demos as a regular event.

That said, I wasn't sure about getting a Wii U, but playing the demo of Rayman Legends on the platform helps assure me that there's going to be some quality content on it, even though I'm already aware that about 40-60% of that content will come from Nintendo itself.

I'm dreaming about a world where future uncutted AAA game titles will be released as a region free 1 hour trial versions without any useless DLC , pre-order , TF2 and season pass crap .

Future demos will likely be from steaming services if anything. However the days of nickle and dimeing consumers with DLC, pre-orders and season passes is only getting started. By the time the next console generation is well established those business practices will be considerably worse than even today.

If developers have no clue how to make a demo that accurately represents what the full game will be like, it's not the gamers fault it's only their own. (Also concerning Spec Ops the critics were far from unanimously praising it)

I don't know if that has been mentioned, but remember when demos where pretty much all a bored gamer needed? I had the Duke3D demo for 2 years before I actually bought the game and I had a BLAST just playing it over and over and over. The STARS! demo pretty much was the game minus making your own races so ditto for that one. Of course, I ended up buying STARS! just so I could make my own races and give them dirty names. :P

Don't need demos, I can gather enough info on a game through a few non-identical reviews (you need to read between the lines), forum discussions and let's plays. Also, there are very rare games that I pre-purchase or buy on release day.

Yes, Jesse Schell analyst i read it fom my good old french videogame site. I didn't look further into it though, as that point don't apply to me. I'm always good to try a demo and may buy if i like it, or not. Looking on Retro City Rampage for my Vita lately thanks to the demo.

Here source i got in french though :

http://www.jeuxvideo.com/news/2013/00063923-les-demos-penalisent-les-ventes-de-jeux.htm

Well for RPGs at least I have never had a Demo that wanted me to play the game more but quite some that made me hesitate on buying the game and later it turned out to be great.

That's an issue with the demo itself, not with demo in general, either it was too short or the "level/section/passage" feature in the demo was poorly selected (like when 90% of the demo is actually the tutorial but not "actual" gameplay)

And I agree that making a demo for a complex open world RPG might be something complicated, but not really for third/first person shooter/platformer that constitute a huge chunk of games released nowadays.

Hello,

I think that many AAA games are sold by hype. They cannot convince through good gameplay or narration so they must use hype to sell their buggy, unfinished, uninspired, hollywood-like cutscene fest product to the unaware sheeplike consumer. So gaming journalism helps to build up a level of hype around the new game. That's why many resources are spend in marketing. Resources that would be better spend in developing good games. Todays target audience does not buy products for the value or quality, they buy the reputation a product comes with it. When it is cool to own the product and everyone they know owns it, they buy. To establish this kind of name regocnition, you need a ton of marketing, advertisement, game journalism bribes, game convention in luxus hotels, porsche test drive invitations for journalists, product placement in gaming shows, super bowl halftime commercial spots.

A demo version of the game can destroy the overexpectation, that a pontential customer has, crushing the hype under cruesome boots of reality. Oh the new Railwayshooter sequel x+ has the same gameplay as every other shooter out there. So demos are contraproductive to sales when you try to sell a mediocre products.

Back then when games had to convince aware consumer through originality and good gameplay, when developers were convinced that their products weres good and proud of them, demos were attracting customers. Nowadays demos are chasing customers away from mediocre products.

Demos cost money and manpower, those resources are already spend on cutting existing content aka developing DLC for the game.

Big AAA publishers simply have no incentive to make demos any more. Demos are not part of the money making plan.

Some developers like Gearbox produce fake demos and trailers to mislead their potential customers. Like they did in Aliens Colonial Marines. #http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/727861/aliens-colonial-marines-gameplay-video/#

Have a nice day.