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Crytek Thinks Free Game Demos Will Soon Be Extinct
An anonymous reader writes with this quote from Develop:
"The CEO of indie studio Crytek has defended EA's divisive 'premium downloadable content' strategy, while also predicting the extinction of free game demos. ... Crytek's co-founder Cevat Yerli said he wasn't sure that a demo of Crysis 2 was going to be released. He said: 'A free demo is a luxury we have in the game industry that we don't have in other industries such as film. Because we've had this free luxury for so long, now there are plans to change this people are complaining about it. The reality is that we might not see any free game demos in the long term. ... Yes it is quite unpopular, but this is a messaging issue. The problem with any new strategy like this is it initially may appear as a blood-hungry, money-grabbing strategy. But I think there is a genuine interest here to give gamers something more than a small demo released for free. Really, what this is, is an attempt to salvage a problem. The industry is still losing a lot of money to piracy as the market becomes more online-based. So it’s encouraging to see strategies outlined to combat this.'"
Okay - lets pop another hypothetical.
There are two games. One you know nothing about other then its being developed by the same studio that produced 2 other titles you loved. The other one, you played the demo, and weren't impressed.
Which one are you going to buy?
This is the kind of trend the market is following.
In addition to providing a (hopefully representative) test of content that we as gamers pay quite a premium for, free demos are extremely useful for benchmarking how a new title will run on a custom-built machine. I cannot stress this enough - I don't buy a title unless I have some idea of how it will run on my rig, and an in-game demo is far more useful than a theoretical advert on the side of the box/website. Eliminate this source of info, and you have some gamers who won't take the risk that a new title will perform adequately on an older custom built, and some other, more vocal gamers who -will- take the risk and then be extremely annoyed and dissatisfied - especially if a title isn't well optimized compared to similar titles with similar theoretical requirements (See: Mass effect 1 vs Mass effect 2) The suggestion that free demos aren't of benefit is insulting.
Serenity? It was 10 minutes IIRC.
It was also a bit dishonest, because those first 10 minutes were the most engaging parts of the film. So it, too, was released to build hype. But I loved Serenity regardless.
What sucks is when the 30 seconds or 2 minutes (or whatever the length of the long ones in theaters) of the movie shown is either from an awesome deleted scene or is made up of the only 30 second (to 2 minutes or whatever) of the movie worth watching.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
EB Games have always had that policy. I would imagine some of their competitors do too.
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