"The end of Free Game Demos" - EA

http://www.develop-online.net/news/34545/Crytek-foresees-the-end-of-free-game-demos

What do you think?

There's already a thread on this. But to give my opinion anyway, I think charging for demos is the dumbest idea I've ever heard. The entire point of a demo is that it's a free sample to help you decide if you want to buy the game or not. I'm sure some idiots will actually pay for demos since for some reason people seem to view them as mini-games these days (see: Halo multiplayer betas) but those are all people who would have bought the game anyway. This can only hurt EA's sales (unless the game sucks, in which case I can see why they want to charge for a demo). I'm especially surprised they're doing this when they complain so much about piracy. Free game demos are a good way to help cut down on piracy since you don't get people pirating the game just to see if they like it or not.

Thats fine, the sad thing is people will pay this. People like demos because it allows them to test before buying. And his no demos for movie is stupid. 10$ vs 60$.

They can be free, they can be charged for, either way I don't care. I don't use demos, crazy I know. :P

I won't be buying them, therefore their games will probably be put further down my list after being interested in a game from its free demo, or even unnoticed.

So the head of Crytek says that making demos are becoming "prohibitively expensive." Can they not find a way to control their spending? If it means games take longer to finish to maintain the same quality they're shooting for, then so be it. How many times are game devs going to let their budgets blow up and pass it on to the consumer before they say enough is enough?

They might as well not release demos at all if they're going to charge for them. Is it only EA who's doing this? What about other companies like Konami?

TO me it rather depends, If it is just a "straight out of the game" chunk, then I think it is too much to paay for, and I wouldnt.

If the emos however is sort of a mini episode, a prequel of sorts (been talked about before) you know a custom made demo from the ground up, then I think it is fine.

I don't own any Crytek games, I couldn't care less what the people at that company think about anything. When they prove themselves relevant outside of super high powered PC games, they will have an opinion worth hearing. To be blunt, I download very few demos as is, the likelihood of me paying for the privilege is slim to none.

When you walk into a supermarket sometimes you see a person giving outFREE samples of a product. And most of the time if people like it they would buythe product. They probably werent thinking of buying that item on that particular day but since they got a free sample and liked it they buy....

I would never pay for a demo........F.U. to whoever thought about this, and guess what ill even go to the extent of not buying an EA game in which you have to pay for the demo. Game companies are making some really shady choices lately and its all becuase we are a bunch of idiots that keep throwing money at them for a half assed effort.........Things like pre release DLC, excessive ingame advertising, < 8 hour games, bad controls, bad graphics, yearly releases of the same game, etc etc..and we keep paying...

I for onehave stopped buying games that get mediocre reviews...I only buy games thatjust about everybody thinks is good. I dont have thetime or money to buy lessthan average games.....

Sure. I'd pay 5 dollars for a game demo. Then, if I enjoyed it, I'd buy it used to offset the cost of having to pay for a demo. Canvas_Of_Flesh

[QUOTE="Canvas_Of_Flesh"]Sure. I'd pay 5 dollars for a game demo. Then, if I enjoyed it, I'd buy it used to offset the cost of having to pay for a demo. BuryMe

[QUOTE="Canvas_Of_Flesh"]Sure. I'd pay 5 dollars for a game demo. Then, if I enjoyed it, I'd buy it used to offset the cost of having to pay for a demo. BuryMe

This right here defeats the purpose of paying for a demo.

I can understand where they are coming from. Since Pirating is already running rampant, i'm sure they are worried about profits already to begin with. So they look at a place they can make money, which is demo's. There is a good amount of work that goes into creating a demo from a game. Even if the final game itself is finished. They have to polish it up and make sure nothing from the full game they don't want anyone seeing isn't in there. But I hardly think paying demo's will help them in the end. I mean i thought the reason they we're free was so everyone could try it out and then see how awesome it is and buy the full game. Now nobody will want to buy the demo's so the game sales might suffer.

"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."

This is nonsense! Movies have trailers, do they not? Games are in a different category, as the quality of a game is hugely dependent upon how it plays, and theres no way to show how a player will subjectively experience that without, well...letting them experience it.

If theyre worried about losing $$'s on demos, they should do one of two things. 1. They should make sure their games are great. A demo will bring way more profits in sales than could be lost via a demo. -OR- 2. Just stop making demos. Some fools will pay for them, then buy the game, but as others said, most of us will just rent it. Wayyyyy better than a demo anyway. Or, like I do, "rent" a used copy from Gamestop for a week, with an option to buy/keep. They (developers) would be losing out, though, as theres been more than one free demo that sucked me into buying a game I didnt care about before....

The day this happens all i have to say is..... let the piracy begin:twisted:

Ea and Infinity Ward now officially suck, that's what I think.

Why is the first attempt at solving a problem charging honest consumers more money? Why not sell ad-space at the front end of your demos? A lot of companies seem interested in advertising their products through gaming, and this would be a relatively non-intrusive way to get those ads to gamers (as opposed to putting them in the games).

I get that creating a demo can be costly. I've talked to people telling me about the weeks of crunching they've endured before a major press event like E3 to prepare a demo. But it's marketing! And the clown in this article wants to spin it like demos are a service to gamers? Right, because the publisher doesn't benefit at all from the free word of mouth publicity (aka hype) that occurs because of demos or from the general exposure their title gets with a demo?

You put out a demo for the same reason I have to sit through 10 Geico commercials every time I sit down to watch a show - because you want people to know your product is out there and what it offers. Demos are really the only way to do that with most games. Drawing an analogy to film is ludicrous since I don't need to have a controller in my hands to tell whether or not I might beinterested in seeing a movie.