A few months ago the demo for Turning Point: Fall of Liberty hit the Marketplace. The demo immediately became a "what-not-to-do" for game developers. The demo received countless bad reviews and people made a mockery of this game. When the retail game hit shelves it had less than stellar sales numbers, to no ones surprise. I have been told that the game is actually pretty good. But so many people wrote it off because of the bad demo that many wont ever play it.
This is a key example of how demos are changing the way companies market games. Typically a demo is put out to gain awareness for the game. You wont see demos for Call of Duty 4 or Grand Theft Auto 4 in the Marketplace, simply because everyone already knows about these games. But for those underrated and sometimes unheard of games a good demo can be the boost the game needs. Demos are fastly becoming as important to a games sales as advertisements.
One key sign of this is a Bourne Conspiracy commercial i saw thew other day. Immedeatley i noticed the commercial was for Bourne, because i had played the demo. But thats not what surprised me. At the end of the commercial, where you would typically see when the game was coming out. It instead informed me that the demo was out. I found this quite interesting. This commercial was during FOX's primetime Sunday night. During Family Guy and American Dad. So that is a pretty big commercial time. So instead of the commercial giving me the date of the games release it told me that the demo was out.
This should tell you how important demos are becoming. They can really make or break a game. Turning Point: Fall of Liberty is a key example of the break. Bioshock is the make. Now Bioshock has received countless awards and is considered the game of 2007. But many people first fell in love with Jack and the city of Rapture in the demo. The demo for Bioshock is one of the best to ever hit the Live Marketplace. Im not going to say the demo made the game what it is but it certainly helped.
Demos create a hype for games and in turn raise sales. The hype has pushed companies like IGN and Gamespot to review some demos. It is interesting to me that people would actually be intrested in a demo review. Aren't reviews supposed to raise awareness for a game and influence people to purchase the game? If you want to know how a demo is just go download it, i mean its free! Unless you dont have Live, then that makes sense. I realized this most recently with GRID. The GRID demo has created such intrigue that many magazines and websites have done reviews for it. I am tickled that people love the GRID demo so much, i do too. But its funny because the game is made by Codemasters. The same company that made Turning Point: Fall of Liberty and the awful demo for it. I guess the people at Codemasters saw how bad a demo can ruin a game so they decided to make the GRID demo a triumph, and it is. It comes with Live capability so you can battle friends online and theres even a contest to win a car.
Demos are changing the way we the people see games, and the way the publishers market them. Yes, demos have been around for a long time on the PC but only recently since the next-gen has the importance of demos really shown itself.
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i dont think demos are changing the way people see games, but due to downloadable demos its easier for people to get their interest in them. the problem with demos for me is that most of them are either REALLY bad or not a fair representation of the game. Take your example of turning point. i was very interested in buying this game due to the story, but the demo and massive mockery of the critics quickly took it off my radar and to the category of "Forget about it". I know you don't own a ps3, but take the demo for resistance, it was a bad demo for a great game. I enjoyed the game for countless hours but then when at a friends house, i watched him play the demo and it didnt fairly depict the game. It seems the case with the upcoming ps3 game Haze. That demo is almost an antique. I saw that game play so long ago and for some reason its the demo they decided to release. Demos to me are a hit or miss. I enjoy having them but more often than not they turn me away from a game more than towards it, which is what I fear the haze demo has done.