Free game demos have been common for nearly two decades in the PC sphere and became more prevalent on consoles since discs were introduced as the store medium of choice. Of course, the growth of networks like Xbox Live and PSN have really helped make demo downloads popular, and they've served as good marketing vehicles for publishers. However, Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli doesn't think that free demos will be around much longer.
“A free demo is a luxury we have in the game industry that we don’t have in other industries such as film,” said Yerli to Develop. “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.”
Yerli also commented on EA's policy to release “premium demos” for between $10 and $15. “I read a lot about this, and read about the backlash as well; people complaining that they would essentially be paying for a beta,” said Yerli. “I think EA’s strategy is interesting, overall. The thing is, every time we see a publisher doing something to improve the industry, making things more commercially viable and actually increasing the market, people instantly think this is only some money-hungry ploy.”
“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,” he continued. “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."
When asked about making a demo for Crysis 2, Yerli responded, “That’s something we need to think about, because we haven’t fully decided on this yet. But whether we do have a demo or not, do I think companies need to release so many demos? I think that we’ll see more and more games not carrying a demo in the future, because it becomes prohibitively expensive. Also, given the time pressures in making a demo – in fact given the time pressure of making a quality demo – I think it all becomes really difficult to work with, and I think we’ll see less and less of them in the future.”
If the industry starts to move away from free demos, we think it will be a mistake. Gamers have gotten used to downloading demos via PSN and Xbox Live and it's become an important part of the greater marketing campaign for most “AAA” titles. Given the large time and money investment that most high-end console games carry, not offering a small free sample would be a step backwards.
1 Comments
April 19, 2010
Demos sell games, espcially the lesser known non-AAA games. If developers like Crytek want us to keep paying $40-60 for their games then they better give us a sample of them via demos.