Do Game Demos Have an Adverse Effect On Sales? 178
An anonymous reader writes "Unigamesity has an analysis of the effects game demos and beta tests have on the full release of video games. Quoting: 'If we think about LittleBigPlanet, Age of Conan or Mirror's Edge, we notice they have two things in common: very successful and well received demo versions (or beta stages) and very poor, lower than anticipated game sales. And since these are not the only titles in which a demo (or the lack of it) appears to be connected with their commercial success, I believe we should analyze the influence demos have in the game world and debate: are game demos game killers?'"
LittleBigPlanet (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm gonna have to blame the PS3 for LittleBigPlanet's failures.
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I meant the fact that the PS3 is very expensive and few people own one.
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People say it is very expensive because it is. If the only feature you care about is the ability to play the latest games, then it is hard to recommend the PS3 over the 360. And I'm saying this as a PS3 owner. I love my PS3, but Sony need to bite the bullet and drop the price or MS are going to eat their lunch.
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I think you're an astroturfer.
"It's not expensive! It's value-riffic!"
I'm aware that the price has gone down in some markets, but it's still 700 dollars for a PS3 where I live. That's a lot of money. I could buy a used car and insure it for that amount of money.
Re:LittleBigPlanet (Score:5, Insightful)
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See here. [cnet.com]
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Re:LittleBigPlanet (Score:5, Interesting)
The question was: "Do Game Demos Have An Adverse Effect On Sales?"
The answer is: "Only if the game in question sucks, is mediocre, or is a one-joke wonder."
A better question would be: "If they don't think their gameplay holds up, why won't they release a demo?"
Compare Doom, for example. Doom, on the face of it, rocked for its time. Giving away an entire 1/3 of the game, far from "having an adverse effect on sales", helped make it a sales king. Even when id software released Doom2, they had a demo out, and the demo still kicked ass and drove sales.
Now think of a lot of games with a demo that "hurt" sales. What games are these? They're mediocre titles. They're titles that just plain aren't worth $50-60 to buy in.
They're the titles that the companies have to trick you into buying. A flashy set of screenshots on the box (that may or may not be representative of the game at all, or may be images of the pre-rendered cutscenes masquerading as "gameplay footage"), a paid-for (or threatened-for) review in a few magazines to garner an award or catchy phrase on the box (how many "best XXX of XXX - XXX magazine" blurbs do we see every year?), "managed review scores" that embargo any site giving below X% so as to trick the early-comers into thinking the game is hot (watch how many games drop from 90% to below 70% aggregate within a month or two of release, when the REAL gamers have their say) and so on.
Kick out a demo of a stinker, and the demo will still be a stinker. Kick out a demo of a mediocre title, and you'll probably turn off those who don't have money (or time) to burn on mediocre titles. Kick out a demo of something that kicks ass, and you'll draw sales.
Examples: I bought Doom on the strength of the "demo." I bought Descent on the strength of the demo. I bought Portal for the 360 on the strength of the demo. I bought the first episode of the Penny Arcade games on the strength of the demo (ok, so I bought episode 2 on the strength of episode 1).
I dropped Rocky & Bullwinkle, N+, and Marathon:Durandal after deciding the demo proved they weren't for me. I might have bought Guitar Hero: World Tour but it's almost exactly the same as Rock Band, and I already burned two months' gaming budget buying Rock Band songs. I don't need to burn another two months' budget on the same exact songs (even if I just use the RB controllers) for GH:WT just to play an almost identical game.
Video games may be "fairly inexpensive as far as luxuries go", but I still budget myself. $120 a month = 2 games, now. I think that's pretty extravagant. Plus working full-time and spending time out with friends (you know, enjoying natural light, social contact, girls, the real world and all), I don't have the time to buy 6 games/month and play them all anyways. I have to pick and choose. If there are demos, it helps me pick out the good ones. If a game doesn't have a demo, then my rent-before-buy policy will serve the same purpose.
Lesson to the game purveyors: you're competing for $120 of my budget and 40 hours of my time each month. If you can't bring a demo to the table, then you've got one strike against you, because I know you don't think your gameplay will grip me enough to buy the game.
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Breakaway hits make up a good chunk of game revenue. I forget the exact statistics, but gaming companies only make money on a couple of big sellers. Putting out demos is marketing, and marketing is vital in hit-driven industries. It's like how singers get their hit single onto the radio to sell their CD. If their single sucks, then their CD won't sell, but that's part of the game.
Depending on the game... (Score:2)
Depending on the game, that works. I've been known to raid the bargain bins for games 4-5 years old, picking up some "gems" for $5-10 apiece.
On the other hand, you run the risk of not being able to find a used/discounted copy of the game easier, if there were less in the original print run than they forecasted. Plenty of "platinum hits" titles are actually shit games that just had a lot of prerelease hype and then get reprinted forever (like Brute Force and MechAssault), and plenty of other stellar games ha
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Try to find a copy of Einhander (playstation1) for example. Go ahead. You'll have a hell of a time.
Well I see a couple of american and japanese copies on ebay buy it now which I could purchase right now should I so desire (though I would have to get a chipped playstation to play them). It seems it was never release in europe.
It is expensive though, £25 for a japaneese copy or £40 for a european copy.
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Do you really think there are 24 great games released every year? Because after a while you have most of the good classic games and each new title is not just competing with new games but all the games you already have.
I buy ~1 game a month, keep one MMO subscription at a time, and game tap and I have way more fun games than I have time to play them. EX: I got Fallout 3 a while ago and I have yet to open the package.
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Why would I want to spend $120 a month on crap?
I'll buy a game at release if I've played the demo that showcases the (high) quality of the game. If the demo shows how much the game sucks, I won't buy it. Simple as that.
The games mentioned here are examples of games that were hyped to the max and really didn't deliver. AOC was (and still is) a buggy piece of shit, Mirrors Edge was just a piece of shit (refer to Yhatzee's over at the escapist for some insight), and I really don't know anything about LBP as I
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The number of people playing video games skyrocketed recently due to the Wii - now over 70% of the US population plays games. The market size increased dramatically but sales went up only 20%. It seems like new gamers buy less games. How many games were made in 2008 as compared to other years?
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I think the "skyrocketing" had less to do with the Wii and more the fact that those of us born in the late 1970s/early-mid1980s have now grown up and have disposable income and are spending it on videogames, much to analysts in the early 2000's suprise. Of course video game sales are improving, their original market (now aged 22-30) now has 20-100% more disposable income from when they were in college, their original market exposed the rest of the university population (who now also has a substantial dispos
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How many people want to make video games, rather than play them? LBP was a game made for game makers, not people who just want to get lost in a fantasy. And while Mirror's Edge was a great concept, the execution definitely could have been better. Age of Conan a World of Warcraft killer? Do they have any idea how many MMO's lie dead now due to trying to go Head to Head with WoW's incredible installbase?
To step back to a bigger scale, 80% of good games fail to recoup. It's just a fact that making a great
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LBP was a game made for game makers, not people who just want to get lost in a fantasy.
Are you sure you've actually played it? The game is excellent, full of constant surprises and an excellent multiplayer experience. We've played it a lot and the only person to really touch the level creation side of things is our five year old son.
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+1 Insightful.
Roger Ebert likes to point out when a studio doesn't hold screenings for critics. It's usually a sign that the movie sucks real bad, and they're hoping to make as much as they can on the opening weekend, before bad reviews and word-of-mouth let the public in on the fact that it's a dud.
I'm not much of a gamer, but I always check out a game's demo before plunking down sixty or seventy doll
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What failures? It's a fantastic game and there is an enormous online community. There are always people available to play with.
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I agree that the game is a great one, but the failure he was talking about was presumably that LBP may not have sold as many copies as they were expecting. This may have had something to do with the PS3 not selling as many as they were expecting. If they had expected to sell LBP to 50% of the PS3 users for a total of... uh, I have no idea what the real numbers are, so lets say 1 million... but only 0.6 million people own PS3s, then it's going to be impossible for LBP to sell their goal no matter how great
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I would say that a big reason why LittleBigPlanet underperformed is the stupid censor policy they run, deleting levels without explanation, deleting everything that might be a copyright violation, even so it would be valid fair use, deleting stuff on their own without waiting for a DMCA takedown notice from the copyright holder, etc. When news about how cool and creative people are with the game is followed by news how all the cool stuff from last week got deleted, its not much of a surprise that some peopl
first? (Score:5, Insightful)
Only if the game sucks.
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Only if the game sucks.
Or if the demo is so good that it obviates the need for the game itself.
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Quake 3 Arena is probably the prime example of that. The demo was so good that there was absolutely no reason to buy the game. The only map that anyone ever played was the one that came with the demo anyway.
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How about Quake I where the full game was on the demo?
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Neither of those demos fit the bill: both Mirror's Edge and LittleBigPlanet did not give out so much content in the demos as to make the full game irrelevant.
Rather, we should look at Mirror's Edge specifically (it's the only one of the 3 named that I have played):
- Demo had incredible smooth-flowing motion, and awesome sense of immersion, is easy to pick up (but had hidden depth), and combat that added some spice without becoming overbearing.
- Full version had the same smooth-flowing motion and immersion,
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Whereas for me, I though Mirrors edge sounded interesting, downloaded the demo and realised I was mistaken. After working out how to move and jump, I realised that the game was going to consist of nothing but more of this, and that simply wasn't compelling enough to make it worth the purchase. Though to be fair, this is a game I was unlikely to buy /unless/ the demo blew me away.
Since getting my 360 recently, and having quota free content downloads from it with my ISP, I just grab any demo that looks va
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I've played demos of games that suck, so I disagree :P
Taste is subjective, so YMMV.
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I've bought many games because I liked the demo. Some of them were cheaper $10-$20 games, like Uplink, Darwinia, and Peggle. Some of them were $50 games, like Left 4 Dead.
Other games I bought because I played friends' (legal) copies, which basically had the same effect as a good demo. Starcraft, Diablo II, Half-Life, Command & Conquer, etc.
I am of the opinion that (generally speaking) every game should put out a demo. If the game isn't good enough, nobody should be forced to pay for it to find out i
Maybe some games are shit (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not that much of a stretch of the imagination to think that someone would demo Mirror's Edge and decide that it was so horrid that they'd rather buy some other game. Are you trying to suggest that gamers should be forced to cough up dough just to see how bad it is?
Re:Maybe some games are shit (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe its more like... if your big draw relies on a gimmick that may wear thin during the demo, you may want to rethink your release strategy.
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Or your game design...
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*GASP*
Blasphemy!
Everyone knows that everything that big record companies, movie studios AND game studios churn out is grade A quality! The mere mention of the idea that the reason for a game to sell poorly is because it sucks is like suggesting the sky is purple! EVERYONE knows that entertainment products only sell badly when they are pirated or when consumers are otherwise cheating hard working media executives out of their money.
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Eh? Most people seem to agree that the ME demo was awesome and actually made the game seem better than it was (primarily because the game is quite short). I played the ME demo through once and immediately bought the game purely on the strength of that.
I think a bigger reason for the poor sales of ME is that it was released around the same time as sequels to several well known series (COD, GoW etc). If you look at the game charts at that time they were whitewashed by sequels.
Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
I would say yes, game demos can kill a game for these reasons:
If you can try before you buy, of course sales are going to go down. Those who buy include those who tried and liked and those who didn't try but gave it a shot in the dark. The publisher/developer isn't really going to care what the user's opinion of the game is after the sale, lest a patch break the game or something like that.
A buyer of a game may or may not tell others about that game, and if he or she does tell others, he may support a purchase or warn against the purchase.
Demos serve a primary purpose: a test drive. If you like it, buy it and use it more. If you don't like it, don't buy it.
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We live in an age with media saturation. If Game Company A offers no demos, Companies B, C... X, Y, Z will be more than happy to.
Unless the game A releases has some type of buzz then, B-Z get the sale.
This is easy to fix. I ran into demos like that. The point is to give a taste, not a meal.
Just like a restuarant shouldn't stuff you with free appetizer
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That's true, but it has nothing to do with Rinisari (521266)'s point that one of the reasons a demo may hurt a game's sales is if it demonstrates that the game isn't any good. This statement is also true.
Well... (Score:2, Interesting)
I have never purchased a game after playing the demo.
But I'm an impulse buyer, typically I play a demo after I own the game, so figure out where I fit in your slashmarket research.
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[...] so figure out where I fit in your slashmarket research.
Somewhere in the middle.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Funny)
typically I play a demo after I own the game, so figure out where I fit in your slashmarket research.
You would fit quite comfortably in the "fucking mystifying" category :-)
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No, you're doing it the only right way.
That depends... (Score:2)
does your game have the words Turning Point in it?
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/31235.html [gametrailers.com]
Sorry Dean, had to go there.
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I haven't picked up TP yet (too many games im playing now) but I intend to when the queue lessens a bit. I got the demo on XBL and thoroughly enjoyed it. Generally I purchase my games after playing the demo.
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Not that I want people to steer away from this masterpiece but this game is so bad it is the definition of what not to do in a video game. I want people to play it just for the entertainment value and laughs it will bring. Play TP and then play a game like CoD or any other FPS game in the last 5 years and it will be worth a comparison. If anything, don't pay money for it. Rent it and you will thank me later.
Good for consumers though (Score:4, Insightful)
In all the cases, the only thing the Demo did is to prevent the buyers from buying bad games or games they don't like. So it maybe hurt the game, but it was all for the benefit of the consumer.
On the other hand, if the game company want to try their hand at passing "bad" games for "good" games, so that the buyers buy bad stuff, they should stop the buyers from trying it before. If you want to sell a bottle of water as vodka to someone, don't let him taste it before!
like movie previews (Score:2)
they only show the best bits of the game/movie.
Re:like movie previews (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, it's not anywhere close to this in games. And that's exactly why demos are (for most games) not really good for sales.
Let's be honest here. Most games today are prone to repetition. You do, essentially, the same thing over and over and over. Take the average FPS game. What's the difference between the first and the last level, usually? Different/more weapons and harder enemies. Where "harder" usually means "more" or "takes more shots or harder hitting guns to kill them". Add different map design and maybe different texture, and you're done with the differences.
If that game should have some distinct feature (like, say, a portal gun), you WILL see this feature in the demo. Simply because you have to show it (and there your comparison to the "good parts" of the movie is right). So you have seen that distinct feature that sets it apart from the rest of the crowd in the demo. Why bother with the full version?
OTOH, if you do not show that distinct feature, the player will just say "meh, another vanilla shooter game" and toss it immediately.
A good demo should show you something neat, should show you why you want to play this game, but should also make you want to see more of it. Maybe hint that there is more to be seen if you get the full version.
Instead, you usually get to see the first few levels of the game, you are allowed to play the tutorial or the first map. That's like showing the opener of the movie. Be honest. How many movies would you have wanted to see after seeing, say, the first 5 minutes?
Re:like movie previews (Score:5, Informative)
Mod parent up.
Making a demo is a complete PITA. You have to take premature code that isn't ready, splice everything in such a way that it kind of hangs together, finish your most polished level in a way that will probably need to be re-done anyway, and throw it all out there in a package that hopefully doesn't crash. Then re-do all of that emergency hack-job work for real. A demo can easily steal one to four development weeks from a team. And sadly, I have never used, seen, or built a demo with the skill or interest that a movie trailer can generate.
A big part of that is that you simply have to teach the player how to play. And as you build up your game, you should be training the player in all of the various types of things they will need as they develop new powers and abilities. Essentially, if you're going to provide a 15 minute taste of the full game, you have to provide the first 15 minutes of the difficulty curve, and maybe throw in a spectacular boss fight earlier than when it would normally occur. If you were to provide a highlight reel of the game, you would be rapid-fire throwing disparate gameplay systems at the player in ways that your loading time and finish level can't support (remember, the demo is usually made before the game is finished). If your game was that ready, you'd ship it. And, as these are taken from the general development team and budget, any time spent polishing your demo is less time spent polishing your game.
Compared to software and game demos, movie trailers are easy.
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Because it is completely impossible to have the dev-team crank out the demo AFTER the game has gone gold and the entire world is waiting for presses to finish and the CD's to be shipped?
A demo can easily steal one to four development weeks from a team.
You have no idea how expensive this is, do you?
Not to mention that asking a team to do a demo after a game has gone gold is basically saying to the team "well, you're done crunching to get the game done, now start crunching to get a demo done really quickly before it reaches retail!"
That's asking for a nightmare in morale loss and mistakes.
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I'm reminded of two games which sold a lot of copies because of the demo: Starcraft and Unreal Tournament. The demos were both so incredible, we immediately wanted the real thing.
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On a practical matter, this is far more true than it should be. Also, your team will burn out in that final push to go gold... there is at least 3 weeks of vacation / uselessness before anyone can be productive again.
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In a lot of cases, demos are built with the last stable bits before you make your final push / overhauls (usually an E3 build). The game will oscillate between periods of being stable and periods of making major changes to make things work, and those major changes tend to break everything. Hence, demos tend to be built from code 3 or 4 months prior to gold (depending on dev cycle), as that is the last stable bits before everything has to be broken for final fixes / changes.
Everyone in the industry recogni
Re:like movie previews (Score:4, Interesting)
Several games have already proven that it can indeed be different. The best example I can think of right now is the old half-life, though there are others as well. I enjoyed half-life as much as I did, because it was so varied. There was a lot of variance in the enemies to fight, and the marines were really great to fight against. Sometimes you were mostly "exploring" this awesome and big scientific complex, with all sorts of odd machinery and stuff. And sometimes you had to solve neat puzzles that were not too contrived but still got you thinking (a bit). The weapons also were very varied and generally extremely "satisfying" to use.
Yes, there is the better weapon/harder enemies progression as well, but that is absolutely fucking not the only thing you can do to make a game fun. I enjoyed every single minute of the original half-life because it got me so immersed as there was always something new and fresh to it. The developers really did everything they could to keep the players interest focused.
It's possible, the developers just need to be aware of the fact that there ARE ways to keep the players interest, instead of stringing one section of bland hallway after another (I'm looking at you, F.E.A.R.)
Demoers (Score:3, Insightful)
For anybody with decent broadband and a modern hard disk, obtaining a demo is fairly quick and essentially free, so you should expect that anybody even vaguely interested will download and try it. For that matter, some people who are merely bored will probably do so as well. In addition, whatever crazed core of supporters your game has will, obviously, latch on to the demo or beta and set the web on fire about it. So, you should expect the demo crowd to be quite large and, in part, highly vocal, no matter how good or bad the game is.
Conan (Score:4, Interesting)
Age of Conan is a bad example. It sold 800k copies, which is pretty good for many PC games. The number of subscribers retained is miniscule though.
What they did was made the first 20 levels of the game awesome. The remainder....to be very kind....not so awesome.
Basically, if your game is good, demo it with a hardcore cliffhanger ending. If your game is bad, don't demo it at all and show pretty screenshots and generate false hype.
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AoC tanked hard and early. Lots of MMOs enjoyed a couple years of good subscriber numbers but dwindled later. SWG, Planetside, CoX...and some are stil doing pretty decent like LotRO...and then we could go into the Asian ones if you want.
But yeah, the rule is that most MMOs will have a large surge initially and die off. Just most don't do it as bad as AoC did :-)
And I know AoC has improved a lot. But Funcom has shown to me they take way too long to fix anything. The reason I left months ago was because
News Flash! (Score:2)
High ad budget = high demo downloads. (Score:5, Insightful)
"very successful and well received demo versions" seems to translate to "widely-downloaded demo" rather than "demo that makes people rant and rave about how awesome this will be".
LittleBigPlanet was getting a lot of Sony's promotional efforts behind it. This article notes that Sony is hoping it'll be a console-selling game.
Mirror's Edge also had a lot of EA's promotion behind it.
I dunno how much puffery Conan was getting as I refuse to play MMORPGs; I only become aware of them when half my friends get sucked into them.
So... lots of people have heard of at least two of the titles this article discusses. Lots of people are curious about them because of all the articles praising them as revolutionary, important, etc. So lots of people downloaded the thing, and decided it was not for them.
Isn't that what a demo is for? Hell, I'm one of the people that downloaded the Mirror's Edge demo solely because of all the hype. I didn't even finish the demo level because I really just don't like first-person games. I also downloaded Space Giraffe and Braid, played the demos, paid my money, and told my friends about these awesome games I just bought.
Lots of people pick up books in the bookstore, flip through them and read a few pages, then put them back on the shelf unpurchased. I would bet that if we had any way of counting this, we would find that books with an aggressive press campaign have more people pick them up to flip through.
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You might be interested in a book I'm reading called Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping by Paco Underhill. Also, he has a company [envirosell.com] that counts the sort of thing you're talking about with respect to books and marketing.
Tag: Demo-crats (Score:3, Funny)
Serious error in premise (Score:4, Insightful)
He equals "downloads of demo" with "success". Downloading the demo only indicates enough interest to try something free, not enjoyment and barely intent to purchase.
If he really wanted to predict success, the demos should end with "Press A if you liked this demo, B if you intend to buy the full game, or X if you thought it was crap"
Then you might have a handle on a game's future success.
Wouldn't matter anyway (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's actually take a look then, shall we? (Score:5, Interesting)
"LittleBigPlanet, Age of Conan or Mirror's Edge, we notice they have two things in common: very successful and well received demo versions (or beta stages) and very poor, lower than anticipated game sales."
LittleBigPlanet = great demo! Similarly, great first hour or two of game! The rest of the game is boring and monotonous. In other words, the demo is actually more fun than the real game.
Age of Conan = WOW clone but not as good, people always praise WOW clones but prefer to play the original
Mirror's Edge = Great concept, except the rest of the game is the same thing over and over. Again, this means the demo is great, but the rest of the game is basically the demo over and over again.
What do all three of these games have in common? THEY SUCK!
Warhammer 40k had a well-received demo and it sold very well, enough to warrant 3 expansions and a soon to be released sequel that some claim will be Starcraft 2's main competition.
Speaking of Starcraft, it's one of the best selling games of all time and it had a well-received demo.
WOW has a demo and it has the highest subscription rate out of any MMO in the country.
Sorry, idea was initially interesting but fails on a many levels.
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WOW has a demo and it has the highest subscription rate out of any MMO in the country.
Exactly what I was going to say. The funny thing is, the WoW 10-level demo actually kinda sucks insofar that you don't get to run an instance or pvp. But, I guess that stuff is a little complicated for a newbie taking a test drive, so simple is good.
The cool thing about WoW is that the full game basically gets more kickass the further into it you get. Some titles like AoC apparently couldn't deliver on that point. My new b
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LittleBigPlanet = great demo!
Which demo? Where can I get that? Unless I am not completly mistaken that game never had a demo, but just a closed beta test.
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Which demo? Where can I get that? Unless I am not completly mistaken that game never had a demo, but just a closed beta test.
Exactly. It's not on the Playstation Store - I've looked, repeatedly.
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Well yeah, but that means if you liked the demo then you'll probably like the full game. I was one of those people. If anything my biggest problem with the game was that there just wasn't enough of it.
Now sure if you don't like the jumping/running mechanic, it's not the game for you, but they had enough variety in the level designs that the demo was pretty representative of the real game experience without makin
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And part of that lies with the review sites and the gaming community. If everyone tells you that the rest of the game sucks beyond the beginning bit, how likely are you to purchase that game? Most people will avoid the full version unless they greatly enjoyed that demo.
Thus, we see the real pattern here: bad game = poor sales, good game = good sales. As a corollary, I think a good demo could only give you a sales boost (by impressing skeptics) whereas a bad demo will cost you sales.
Word of mouth is the m
LBP - what failure? (Score:3, Interesting)
very poor, lower than anticipated game sales
LittleBigPlanet is closing in on 2 million sales after 10 weeks. See vgchartz. [vgchartz.com]
It started off a little slow, but picked up steam through the holidays. This game doesn't support the hypothesis.
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And look at Mirror's Edge. A successful game by most measures, though not quite as successful as EA had hoped. But look at the review scores: those explain your problem.
Goes both ways (Score:3, Interesting)
Games I bought because of the demo:
Klick and Play
Dark Reign 2
World of Goo
Braid
Battlefield 2
Defcon
Shadowgrounds
The Ship (free weekend)
Red Orchestra (free weekend)
Day of Defeat: Source (free weekend)
Sam and Max: Episode 1 (and later both seasons)
Games I didn't buy because of the demo:
Left 4 Dead (fast zombies didn't appeal to me)
Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People
a few I can't remember
Games I bought because of beta:
Red Alert 3
Overall, for me at least, the ones I've bought are ones where I didn't have trust that it was good quality beforehand or was unsure I would enjoy it. The ones that turned me away are the ones I was hyped up to think it was good beforehand either by good reviews or marketing. I probably would have bought them had it not for the demo.
Couldnt agree more (Score:2)
I've bought tons of games because the demos kicked ass. I got cossacks because of the demo, and ended up buying the whole series and the demos for battlefield 2 and castle wolfenstein also got me to buy.
I think if you are developing a game and are concerned that people playing the demo won't buy it, you need to put more effort into the game.
As a developer, I can see how someone could show statistical evidence persuading me that no demos means more sales, but I still wouldn't do it. I'd rather my sales be a
Heroes of Might & Magic, etc... (Score:2)
Yes it does go both ways. I have a list like yours but one of my favorite examples is HOMM. I downloaded the demo for HOMM2 on a whim around half a decade ago. (Even by then it was already pretty dated.) It had a single large map but like Diablo, the placement of monsters, treasures were different each time. Plus you could set the difficult level, etc so no two games were alike. In theory, that would have been "more than enough" as an earlier poster had said. Heck, I wasn't even into that genre but somehow,
Wow. (Score:2)
Yeah. I can see how that worked out for Age of Conan. World of Warcraft also had a very well received beta period and the outcome was also entirely unexpected.
Overall yes, specifically no. (Score:2)
I've seen a study that found out that indie games sell better without a demo available (the page was randomly served with and without a demo download option, the one without the option showed more sales, I presume they used cookies to make sure they serve the same version to the same people or something) but I don't think the failure of these specific games is to blame on the demo. Mirror's Edge and Little Big Planet are stylized games with quirky game design (one is a first person jump&run, the other i
It's simple. (Score:2)
A demo for a good game will increase sales, and for a bad game it will decrease sales. Solution: stop publishing bad games.
I wouldn't have bought Starcraft, Diablo 2, or anything made by Spiderweb Software, for example, if not for their demos. Can't think of many bad games I actually bothered with the demo (if it existed) of, though.
Why the constant stream of excuses (Score:4, Interesting)
Dear videogame industry,
Why do you spend so much time and effort coming up with excuses and reasons why you failed on X game but not Y game? Make good games, offer them at a reasonable price, and don't mess up our computers/consoles to run it, and we will give you MONEY for it. Seriously. The other factors like "do demos hurt or help" are trivial at best, you still haven't learned the most important lesson that quality products = sales.
There are plenty of examples of this, it boggles the mind that you consistently look for alternative explanations. "Generic minigame collection 5 didn't sell too well. Maybe it was because people don't like games that have 5s or a multiple of 5 in the title!" No, it was because generic minigames 5 was crap and no one wanted to own it (as opposed to generic minigame collection 4.) THAT'S why you don't have as much money as you wanted.
If you find yourself not having as much money after making a game as you expected, don't immediately jump to blaming things like weather patterns in florida, first determine if it was a good game. Then ask yourself if your expectations were at all reasonable. AFTER that you can ask yourself what went wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
This. This article reveals a poorly thought out idea. All it does is allow the gaming industry to lie to itself; it's not our fault that sales are lower than expected, it's because we released a demo!
It takes 2 seconds to dispel such a stupid concept. Worst of all, someone got paid to come up with that idea!
Re: (Score:2)
The most annoying thing in games are those that only work if you have a super computer.
That is shooting on your own foot!
I played Everquest (the original) and it was great. Good enough detail and good responsiveness, both from server and from my computer.
Then they made 2 expansions and it still was ok...
Then they made the moons expansion, upgraded the graphic engine, new spell effects and so on, and hell broke loose!
They transformed a good game into a lag machine.
Soon after, they lost a player on me...
Re: (Score:2)
The other factors like "do demos hurt or help" are trivial at best, you still haven't learned the most important lesson that quality products = sales.
The thing is, quality of the product and sales are related, but quality products == good sales. It's worth looking into different ways of seeing what affects the profitability of games, since there are people like me who make a living out of it, and we like keeping our jobs.
I don't agree with the articles premise of good demos being a negative detractor in even most cases, but there are other features of a game that would certainly affect sales.
Whats up with game prices in the UK? (Score:2)
While at the topic of game sales, whats up with PS3 game prices in the UK? LittleBigPlanet, MirrorsEdge, Resistence2, Fallout3 and a whole bunch of other pretty new games sell for less then half the regular price on Amazon.co.uk.
That makes no sense (Score:2, Informative)
Other factors (Score:2)
There are other factors to consider too. I purchased Unreal Tournament 2003 based on how much I liked the first game and the demo for 2003.
Rumor had it that Halo was never going to be released on the PC in order to bolster Xbox sales. Lo and behold, that turned out to be false and one year later, Unreal Tournament 2004 comes out to compete with Halo.
What was 2004 but 2003 + vehicles? While I loved the demo, I was pissed that I spent $50 on the game only to have the next one come out 1 year later. Of cou
Re: (Score:2)
Wow! That would have been nice to know! I think they should have advertised that better. But to be honest, $10 off a $50 game when I just paid $50 for the previous version isn't really a good discount. I would not have gone for it. Instead I would have bought Halo.
I'm sure I'll get labeled as something negative here, but at those prices and with as much overlapped content as there was, I would want a 50% discount for the game. Or rather, I would expect a refund to bring the final price down to $25 bas
I think they have a bigger effect on FUTURE sales (Score:2)
Naturally it's not past sales they effect, but what I mean is that if I buy a game based on the demo and then find out that everything good about the game was in the demo and the game actually sucked when you balance out everything good with everything bad, then I will probably never trust that publisher again. Of course, what matters even more is if the game sucks - after Black & White, I couldn't bring myself to buy the sequel, for example, because I simply couldn't trust that it wouldn't be more frus
Re: (Score:2)
Furthermore, you're likely to tell everyone your opinion on the game: the demo was good, but the game sucks and you feel cheated. This will cost them even more sales on future titles AND it will cost them sales on the game that you purchased.
Buggy game demos == Lost sale (Score:2)
The only game out of those three I bought was UT3. However, Epic seems to have considered UT3
I think they're right: it's game quality (Score:2)
Because the 'real' game was sized as a demo? (Score:2)
I'm sorry, but the days of spending $60 on a game that offers 3-5 hours of gameplay is right out. After the Doom 3/Blue Shift fiasco, I always wait to hear what other *gamers* who actually shuck out there own cash think of it.
Mirror's Edge got heavy, heavy promotion. Heck, thought I even saw an advert for a TV show tie in? People got it and reported how short of a game it is. $50-60 is too much. Strong game with no content -- the studio should not be shocked that it does not sell once word of mouth get
Selective Data Set (Score:2)
If you look at Age Of Conan, it had a large beta and then flopped.
Yes, and if you look at EverQuest, it has a large beta and was so successful as to be synonymous with the genre for years. World of Warcraft also had a large beta and did massively well.
So far, all we've established is that MMOs have large betas.
Without the level of game balancing and bug testing that can only come from vast numbers of people doing stupid things, exploiting systems, trying something creative, an MMO without a beta would launc
I love demos... Sometimes... (Score:2)
I've bought based on demos (Score:2)
I've bought several games, console and PC, based on demos.
YouTube, Amazon reviews (Score:2)
I buy games based on gameplay footage found on YouTube, backed up by customer reviews on Amazon. I've given a little back, too, posting my own footage and submitting my own reviews if I have a strong opinion on a game.
A demo isn't enough. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I also bought mirror's edge because of the demo. I heard about it in the magazines, but wouldn't have ever invested $60 just because reviewers gave it kudos for being unique. The game sounded like there was a good chance I wouldn't like it.
Castle crashers was the same way, highly rated but I would not have bought it without a taste. It didn't exactly sound like something I would enjoy.
Reviews (Score:2)
Why not read the reviews? Or ask people who've played them if they're any good? Or you could test drive them (full versions) yourself at a friend's house. Works for me.