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Do Game Demos Have an Adverse Effect On Sales?
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?'"
I'm gonna have to blame the PS3 for LittleBigPlanet's failures.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Only if the game sucks.
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?
How we know is more important than what we know.
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.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
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.
Modding me -1 troll doesn't make me wrong.
I bought both LBP and Mirrors Edge, LBP I had been following for a while and actually bought my PS3 because there was a good game besides MGS4. Mirrors Edge on the other hand, I tried the demo after hearing about it from a friend and bought it because I liked it. I would probably not have bought Mirrors Edge had I not played the demo.
I don't know about Age of Conan, but the demo for Mirror's Edge definitely told me I wasn't interested in the game, and the chance to play LittleBigPlanet told me enough that I'd never want to play it, either.
So I wouldn't say that demos prevent people from buying games. I know the chance to play in the beta for World of Warcraft got me to subscribe - but World of Warcraft has proven to be an excellent game.
I can also think of some shareware games from way back in the day that I'd never have bought the full version of if I hadn't tried it first.
In fact, Doom comes to mind as an amazingly successful game that had a demo.
So, no, giving away a demo doesn't necessarily kill sales. Being a horrible game kills sales. Mirror's Edge's demo proved to be an effort in trial-and-error game play. Playing LittleBigPlanet at a friend's proved that the game is a rather boring sidescroller and that the community levels suck.
does your game have the words Turning Point in it?
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/31235.html
Sorry Dean, had to go there.
If we take the given fact that demos are there for the users to try the game before they buy it, to know if they like it enough to play a "full length" game, I think this is a good thing. And the only thing we can deduce from the fact that those game, if after the users played the demos, didn't want to buy them, well it meant that either they didn't like the game enough, they didn't feel like it was worth it, or the novelty of the game was over after the Demo.
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!
I wouldn't mind you in my head, if you weren't so clearly mad -Lews Therin Telamon
they only show the best bits of the game/movie.
I'd be inclined to suspect that, while releasing a demo will serve to improve the correlation between your game's quality and its sales(this can cut either way) assuming that the demo isn't really dreadful or good enough to substitute for the real thing. However, I further suspect that your demo audience is not representative, and won't tell you as much as you might like.
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.
It's basically the same question. You take a risk that you'll get panned, and you'll never make it off the launch pad. On the other hand, if you don't, where do you get your word-of-mouth buzz that gets everyone excited for your product?
And, by the way, if you decide to bypass this process, many will think what you're producing has something to hide, and will be suspicious your product sucks.
Why would someone with a good product be worried about the demo "killing" the product?
Look. Mirror's Edge was a BAD GAME. I'm sorry. It had a great concept, and fun mechanics, but it was poorly executed and didn't capitalize on it's promise. THAT'S their problem. Not the fact that they made a demo.
The concept and and mechanics were it's greatest strength. The demo got people excited about the game. Had the game delivered, the excitement about the demo would have bought them HUGE sales numbers.
A great demo can give you "the curse of high expectations" (certainly the case with Mirror's Edge). But really, that's bitching about your meal ticket. Without impressive real game footage and a fun demo, no one would have given a rats ass about Mirror's Edge when it launched. No one trusts a company's press releases and we've all learned "pre-rendered" footage rarely matches real play.
You want to get me excited about your game? Give me a taste. If it's good, I'll buy it. If the final product delivers on that flavor, I'll keep playing and tell all my friends. Plus I'll go out to the google and tell everyone about how awesome your game is.
Crayon Physics is doing pretty well right now. Guess why?
If you release a demo for a good game, like Braid or Left4Dead, you get great sales. If you release a demo for a game that sucks, like Age of Conan, then you get bad sales. This shouldn't surprise anyone. In fact, it's rather disheartening to think that a company might think to themselves, "Hmm, our game isn't doing that great in the focus groups.... should we improve it? Nah! Let's just trick as many people into dropping fifty to sixty bucks on it as possible, before they realize its no good."
Battlefield 1942 would disagree. Demo was amazing and the game did very well as a result on an otherwise "out of left field" game.
Perhaps we should actually do a study where more then 3 games are compared before we formulate an opinion.
This is stupid. It's impossible to to measure the effects of demos by comparing games in the real world. Your examples could be easily explained by other factors as well. You would have to seperate two groups with no contact with each other and see if they would buy the game (one group with demo) of a specific game.
Reasons for not buying a game after playing a demo is pretty obvious (like not liking it after play or not being able to run) but that's also balanced out by those who wouldn't have bought the game without knowing about the game (ie demo).
it's a question of who buys your games more, impluse buyers or knowledge buyers but you won't figure that out by mere discusion.
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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Crappy game demos cause crappy end sales? How is this news? If I get the chance to try a game and determine it sucks of course I won't buy it.
most games today are the same, they repead the same styl over and over again.
ppl don't buy games because of the story or sth. else anymore.
ppl buy games because they have the NEW factor
ppl don't really want to buy the game, they want to buy the NEW factor
the demo has that factor as well.
you don't need the game anymore after you had the demo
"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.
egypt urnash minimal art.
Seriously do it.
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.
That's is sort of a dumb argument. The idea is that if gamers try a game and decide it's not worth buying, they won't buy it? Does this apply to game rentals as well? What about game reviews? In those cases developers won't see any revenue for their games, but it allows gamers a glimpse of what the game is. In the perfect world developers would make nothing but great games and we wouldn't have to worry about trying them before hand. Unfortunately that's not the case.
I have nothing compelling to say
"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.
very poor, lower than anticipated game sales
LittleBigPlanet is closing in on 2 million sales after 10 weeks. See vgchartz.
It started off a little slow, but picked up steam through the holidays. This game doesn't support the hypothesis.
Kinda a silly article since it probably goes both ways.
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.
"...titles which offered no demo versions were still incredibly well received by the public and sold big time: Grand Theft Auto IV and Metal Gear Solid 4 are probably the most recent examples."
These are two well established series and I don't see that demos would hurt the sales that much, with the possible exception of people who bought them just to see what all the hype was about. But I get the feeling they would've sold just fine even with demos.
And then you have the games which had demos but didn't do well, such as Little Big Planet and Mirror's Edge. These are brand new properties and game styles we've not really seen before, so demo or no demo people are always scared of new things.
Ultimately it's hard to say without a time machine. For my own part, I never would have bought Motorstorm if I hadn't played the demo.
A demo can say many things about a game. What it doesn't say, however, is the amount of content. In this case, Mirror's edge is a prime example. While I did in fact buy the game, I braced myself for what other people had already told me; a game that can be finished within 6 hours on your FIRST try. In fact, the game challenges you to beat the game under this mark. While I never tallied up the minutes, the game falls very short of regular game length.
If a game doesn't have demo, I don't buy it. I have been burned WAY TOO MANY times. I can't stand spending $50+ for a game that I end up not playing at all. There have also been many times where I play the demo, and find that the game is crap so I don't buy it.
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.
Games I bought because of the demo:
Shadowgrounds + Shadowgrounds Survivor
Bloodrayne 2 (because sex sells)
Uplink
Collections I bought because I've played some games in the collection before:
id Software Super-Pack (from Keen to DOOM3)
Orange Box
Half-Life 1's other games (OpFor, Blue, TFC)
Several people have written very well on their personal gaming experiences. I hope they'll write more!
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 is a game about user created content). If we look at the history of critically lauded stylized games these tend to fail in the marketplace. In fact I'd say LBP was very successful for a title in its position (some time ago I saw a sales figure of 1.3 million, might have increased by now, games like that tend to be in the 200k-500k range) though that may have been related to the massive hype the game received ("the last game you'll ever need", the PS3's killer app that will catapult it to #1, advertising everywhere, even a console bundle for it) which niche titles like that usually lack.
Other examples in the article weren't exactly flops, of course the demos will get more players than the final game (costs nothing to grab a demo but the full versions of the games listed were 70€). I think complaints are only really warranted when a game fails to perform as expected, that free versions will outperform the paid-for ones is pretty much a duh.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
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.
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
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.
"...very successful and well received demo versions (or beta stages) and very poor, lower than anticipated game sales..."
Someone else noted why people wouldn't purchase a game after seeing the demo. Good points there.
Demos also help generate interest in a game. If you don't want to have demos anymore, prepare for the possibility that there will be even less sales because people don't want to spend money on an unknown.
Or maybe the "anticipated games sales" was unrealistic in the first place.
Of course they have a massive effect. But it really depends if the demo showcases the games best aspects or not.. Demos that give you the first or second level is not really showing you the games potential because we all know the first levels are the "Hi, Your dumb because your new so let us explain everything that is already obvious but sadly there are still people who don't get it". Simply if games showed more of the massive rule bending aspects of the game then demos would benefit.
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.
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 bit lower overall than thinking I'd 'tricked' people into buying a game they didn't like, and field lots of angry emails from people who feel let down.
As a gamer, I hate it when games have no demos. As a game developer, it's almost good news for me, because there is less competition for my demos, and it also helps set me out as being a company that always has a release-day demo available.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
No offense, but that theory is nonsense and I doubt that the author did proper research on the topic. Age of Conan failed because at the time it was filled with a two or at max four weeks of content and that was it. The gameplay totally changed after the first 20 levels, from a deep single player action-adventure - which was alot of fun in the vein of Oblivion and The Witcher - to a dull and empty game with no content. ALSO: Promised features that didn't make it into the release version. I fell in love with this game and bought it BECAUSE of the demo and I still feel betrayed by Funcom. Basically what the author is suggesting is, that a small taste of something good makes us don't wanna eat more of it. Makes no sense and is not human nature.
Demos are extremely good for any game that cannot afford proper advertisement because (if the demo is good) it is advertisement that will be passed on by recommendation. So, for small studios trying to get a start, demos are great.
If the game is already heavily advertised, a demo is going to hurt it. The demo lets people who are just wondering about the game try it out. Some people wouldn't have bought the game without the demo, some would have tried the game if they couldn't get the demo. In the end, if the demo is very good, the best you're likely to get is a break-even, while a decrease in sales is likely possible as well.
So, Sony and EA should sack the demos, garages should pump them out.
I remember when the demo of Return to Castle Wolfenstein came out, and the game was always full of people, so after I decided that I loved the demo I went out and bought it. To absolutely no surprise, the full game (which had 10 times the multiplayer games) all of them were packed for the longest time. So I guess it all depends on whether or not there is a good replay value to the game.
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, I got hooked! I promptly got out and got the HOMM Platinum Edition that had HOMM 1, 2 & 3 plus expansion packs for about $39. (Same with StarCraft 1, KKND2.)
Demos that were "enough" for me were American McGee's Alice, Sacrifice, Giants: Citizen Kabuto, etc. Didn't go out to buy the full versions. Well, that's just me. Its a matter of taste.
I have the GalCiv demo and I most probably will buy the full version.
In short, I think the net effect of demos is more positive than negative on sales. I don't download every single demo that comes out. Sometimes, I just read the reviews and make a decision based on that. (Didn't get Spore or RA3.)
And demo or not, I'm definitely getting StarCraft 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.
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 course, I didn't buy it even though the demo rocked. Had they offered a good discount to 2003 customers, I probably would have bought it.
There are no doubt other factors than this, but release dates too close to each other (whether to competitor's products or your own) are definitely a very big problem.
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 frustrating than rewarding. (From the reviews, I did the right thing.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
My wife and I both want(ed) to play Little Big Planet. With that said, there's no way in the ninth circle of hell that we're going to invest in a PS3 to do so. Proprietary consoles can suck a fattie. Now, I wonder how many other potential non-consumers there are out there in my shoes? At least Square Enix is shaping up; Sony doesn't get a stranglehold on Final Fantasy anymore. I hope that turns into other a *lot* of other developers abandoning one-console contracts. Metal Gear, Grand Theft Auto, Final Fantasy as multi-console releases? =)
I remember downloading the Bioshock demo when Bioshock first came out and discovering that it I would get a BSOD about a couple minutes into it. I remember downloading the Timeshift demo and discovering that the executable wouldn't even... execute. I remember downloading the Unreal Tournament 3 demo and having to spend a couple of hours searching forums and playing with obscure settings just to get it to run.
The only game out of those three I bought was UT3. However, Epic seems to have considered UT3 PC as a sales failure. Is it any surprise that sales are lost if the company is unable to provide a demo that even works?
The two best demos I ever played were Doom (obviously, a third of the game is not a bad demo) and Unreal Tournament 2004, which provided 1 map for every single game mode except the new one (Onslaught) which had TWO maps. Not only that, but there was not one but TWO demo releases, the second fixing bugs and adding content. Is that good business sense? I don't know. I played the UT2004 demo for a LONG time, but I was 17 and penniless, so I don't think I'm a good sample.
As another poster here pointed out, you could get the complete DOOM in the first episode for free, never buy another thing and play it forever, and it basically convinced almost everyone to buy the other two episodes. At least it did for me, and I'm a messy cheapskate
I bought The Orange Box based strictly on the strength of the video demos of Portal, and in fact, if I had gotten a playable demo of part of Portal it would have convinced me even stronger to buy the game. (A video showing the game on YouTube convinced my sister it would make her too dizzy and she wouldn't like it.) A demo sells the game as well as the game is. A great demo for a sucky game is going to let more people know how badly it sucks faster than no demo at all, because having actually tried it they'll buy it faster than they would otherwise. This gets a smaller number of copies out faster than when a lot of people buy it over time, and the even quicker sales to a small number of people make its faults more obvious.
Critics point this out for motion pictures; a red flag in most cases is when the distributor won't screen it in advance of release for critics; it usually means they know the movie is going to be terrible. James Cameron tells how when they were getting ready to release Terminator they needed to get a strong exposure to critics in order to start a buzz, and by making sure lots of them saw it - for free, of course - it made the film even more successful because even the critics loved it and the 'buzz' they generated got more people out to see it, including people who might not otherwise have gone to see a typical 'action' type film.
If, however, the demo proves the value of the product, it builds 'buzz' and gets people talking. This is even more critical now that you don't just have word of mouth, but "word of blog," too. I mean, I run a tiny blog but I still get as many as a thousand people reading some of my articles; if, say, I bash a game, I'm another person confirming to as many as a thousand other people that it's lousy. Imagine what the effect of a comment is from someone who has a couple million visitors a month.
I suspect it's the exact opposite of what you would normally expect: hoarding (as in not giving away free samples) only works where you've got trash; sharing your stuff works better for you when you have really good stuff. if your game is good, giving away a sample is going to make people more interested in buying it, if your game is terrible, a demo is going to make people know this even faster because the demo will sell the game to people who will scream bloody murder.
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
I have had my interest piqued by demos of good games. Bad games, or games that aren't "large enough" to be worth the purchase price - I learn that, but I probably would not have bought them anyway.
And this is Slashdot...how many times has a demo piqued your interest enough to bother BitTorrenting it? :P
(I play older PC games, not newer PC games or consoles)
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
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 gets out.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
In the case of Age of Conan, Well funcom really screwed it up themsleves- I quickly noticed how buggy and problematic the release version was- I held out for a while the deactivated my account, a few months later I reactivated it- what happened, well most bugs seemed to be gone- but then they suddenly implemented Murder points on the PvP game play, guess what- new feature and new game stopping bugs.
I deactivated- and I consider I gave Age of Conan two fair chances, while I think the game was conceptually pretty good- it sucked qualitywise.
More recently I read a couple of reviews of Mirror's Edge and decided this is NOT a game for me. No need to even download the demo, it would just be a waste of time. Logically, this means GAME REVIEWS can have an adverse effect on sales.
After being a long-term fan of the Grand Theft Auto series, I looked around for a demo of GTA IV and came up empty. Obviously, I downloaded a pirate copy which confirmed the rumors saying the game barely works at all. Logically, this means the GAME ITSELF can have an adverse effect on sales.
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 have a smaller print run, lesser marketing budget, and become rare or impossible to find even 6 months down the road.
Try to find a copy of Einhander (playstation1) for example. Go ahead. You'll have a hell of a time.
If you can read this sig, congratulations, you have your glasses on!
The Battlefield series, every release for the PC has had a Demo out, which gave us access to one multiplayer map, and none of the class upgrades. What this did is show me how strong and entertaining the multiplayer was, and tease me with things I might want so it drove me to definitely buy the full version.
I have definitely played demos of games that sucked that caused me not to get the game, but mostly I already had a idea of how much the game sucked, and the demo just confirmed it for me.
Now a totally different case, is a Game like Assassins Creed. I may be unpopular for saying this but I think that game sucked big time, once you got past the first city. I say this because the first time you do all the cool things to do in that game, it's awesome, but then you quickly realize as you play the game that it's just the same exact thing over and over in every city. Now think about what a demo of this would have done. (I didn't play a demo, just the full version) A demo would have shown maybe one city, or a bit of one city, and I would have thought the game was awesome. All the little things to do would still be new and original. I'd probably love the demo, and buy the game based off of it. Then I'd be really pissed, once I realized I could duplicate the full game just by playing the demo 5 or 6 times...
I downloaded a demo for Warhawk, a game I had never heard of for ps3. To my suprise the demo had full multiplayer online and was a really good battlefield/flier, after playing the demo (on a single level) for a month and a half we bought the game and still play it all the time.
Perhaps demos offer a way for good games with no following to get their foot in the door.
Of course it can hurt your sales, however, not having a demo available and having people regret their purchases of your game will likely hurt your future sales aswell. Well maybe I'm the only one, but once a studeo has dissapointed me I generally don't buy any more of their games.
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.
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 launch only to get destroyed in reviews as it utterly failed to handle these things.
Conan struggled, from everything I hear, primarily because it had a great concept (let's actually make an MMO for grown ups) but didn't manage the breadth of execution that something like WoW has. As a result, it's a huge amount of fun for a short period of time.
Yes, a beta coincides with that but, even without a beta, it would have had great three month figures, average six month figures and weak one year figures. At least with a beta, people are more forgiving as they know it's not final and they're not paying. They'd have just left quicker from the final paying service.
So, sure, you can selectively pick a tiny data set, that happens to coincide with great single premises but no longevity, in order to support the conclusion. But the whole point is the data set is so limited and contrived you could select a similar data set to [fail to] "prove" just about anything.
I didn't buy mirror's edge BECAUSE I couldn't find a demo.
Most demos that I see now don't have much in the way of gameplay, it's more a commercial with a tiny bit of the game. Those normally leave a bad impression. Just gimme a demo that starts with a nice section of the game and runs me through a range of the options in the game for some time and I'm happy. Cut me off after 30 seconds and I'm not going to play your demo, and probably not buy the game. Force me to watch ads before the demo starts, and I'm not going to play it.
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sounds to me like an excuse so they can justify not having to have you try before you buy, then bank on the fact most places you go to buy games only do store credit, and the game is still considered purchased even after you return it.
In my experience, every demo I played, I wanted to buy the game. there were a few shitty ones I wouldn't touch ever. Thing is, compared to the days when I was really into gaming and today, today, most games are shit and uninteresting, all the good game devs have either become lazy and are pumping out shit, or the good ones have been bougt out by the former.
I've bought several games, console and PC, based on demos.
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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.
Do Game Demos Have an Adverse Effect On Sales?
Yes, if after playing the demo I realize the game sucks. Case closed?
im a gamer and i know to download the demo of a game before i buy. if the game demo is good then i will probably buy the game but if the demo is bad i wont (duh) point is if games dont release a demo and the game isnt good they can get more money by tricking customers and if the demo is good they will get many more customers. p.s. philspear good post u really hit the nail on the head
I generally suck at video games. The upside is that I can rarely play through the demo much less the full game. Saves money too. Not sure how many people are in the same boat.
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Demos aren't enough to persuade me to buy a game. After all, a demo might very well be the the best part of the game. I can't trust game reviews, either; if the editorial staff of a given site/magazine hasn't been corrupted, I might not like a well-reviewed game simply because the reviewer's tastes are not my tastes. As far as I'm concerned, the only answer is to rent all games. If I like a game after I'm done renting it, I'll buy a copy the next time I want to play it. Otherwise, I won't buy.
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All the games mentioned have different reasons for "failure" as far as I'm concerned. Conan never stood a chance. It had a successful Beta because every MMO has a successful Beta b/c the WoW freaks try the Betas and never buy the games. Mirror's Edge never stood a chance of superb sales in the U.S. b/c of the premise (running from your enemy rather than ripping their head off) but its uniqueness made people want to try it out (without committing money, of course). Little Big Planet is an odd case. It had a last minute recall, is insanely different from any other game, and was released on the console with the lowest market share. The only game I would consider a failure would be Conan. There is no hope of recouping the development costs for that game. Mirror's Edge will never be a blockbuster but it sells at my store (with the #1 reason being, "I loved the demo") and Little Big Planet has, unlike most games, sold more week after week.
What will really help Mirror's Edge and especially Little Big Planet out is that trade-ins are rare. When people keep the game rather than trading it in the game is able to pick up more sales as time goes on. Little Big Planet has a lot to keep one's attention and the downloadable content isn't gimicky like most games. In other words, Little Big Planet doesn't have to be a top holiday seller to be a stellar success.
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