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Do demos HURT game sales? Study says yes

HokieJoe said:
Demo's have definitely sold me games. Demo's have definitely made me avoid games.
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Same here, and I don't know who buys a $60 game without playing it first. Game Crazy offers free demos of non-M games, and renting is always an option for everything else.
 
C4Lukins said:
In the 360's case, they typically do not release demos for their bigger games. Correct me if I am wrong, but Halo 3, COD4, Gears of War, Oblivion, Mass Effect, and Assassins Creed did not have demos. When a game has a massive marketing budget, I guess they really do not see the need when all it can do is hurt them. For games like Bioshock, Crackdown, and Viva Pinata though, these are games that had little mainstream recognition so good demos probably helped them out. I think it can only hurt a game when it is highly anticipated and the demo is shit. I think these numbers are going to be a bit skewed just because the bigger releases that the companies know are going to sell tend not to have a demo.
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Well most of the games ended up under delivering and mediocre to crap at best. They sold mostly on hype and bullshots alone.
 
I almost didn't get Burnout Paradise because of the shit demo, but every Xbox Live Arcade game that I bought was because I loved the demo. Study am fail.
 
I find demos enjoyable, but most of the console games I own never had demos in the first place. Where they really come in handy is on PC, where it helps to know if a game will work on your system first before purchasing; I have a rather low/mid range rig, so most games are a bit sketchy.
 
Oh, was this game part of the sample?

200282b.jpg



:lol
 
Going by the demos alone, I would not have bought either Uncharted or Heavenly Sword (thankfully I did)

I think videos are better at conveying what the final games is like as a whole, even if you don't get to actually play

Sports/racing games should always have a demo though
 
I think that if it is indeed true, then demoes are fulfilling their purpose.

Unless they're just made to remind people the game isn't out yet.

There are games I've bought based on demo impressions, and there are some I've passed on. It would be the same if I were playing 5 minutes of the full game though, I just get to decide before the game launches and not after.
 
I can say unequivocally without any sense of fandom that demos have sold me far more games than they have not. Without a doubt easy access demos is one of my favorite features of this gen.
 
A big part of the problem is that there are so many bad demos that aren't representative of the final product, or feel barren and empty because the developers fears giving too much away (Burnout Paradise's demo suffered from this). A lot of demos are merely the opening of the game usually before all the gameplay systems that make the game enticing are fully introduced.
 
Well, if they're not going to release a demo they better give us some actually gameplay footage. Not cinematic trailers. It's ridiculous I don't even know what the HUD looks like in motion for half of these game until the video reviews come out.
 
Thanks to the bioshock demo, I realized the game was extremely, massively overhyped and that I was going to fall in a trap. Had I not played that demo, I would've most likely bought the game, the hype was immense and undeserved.
 
AlphaTwo00 said:
I honestly wonder how Burnout would have done if they never had a demo.
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The demo sold me on the game and I love every hour I have put in it. I dont know whats wrong with the rest of you freedom haters.
 
In addition to the reasons already mentioned why this study is crap, I'd like to add a couple more:

- It's comparing apples to oranges. The only way for this data to truly matter is to have two vacuums where you can measure sales with and without a demo.

- I can't think of a single game that had ONLY a demo. Media is released for EVERY game, and it's stupid to base a study only on media that is released on the system marketplaces. There are really only two categories - games with demos and games without. And even then, you have the enormous problems raised earlier in the thread.

Anecdotally, demos DEFINITELY helped sell me on games that I was lukewarm on like Crackdown and a number of XBLA games. On the flip side, not having demos on PSN and VC games is a huge deterrent for me. I almost never buy anything from those stores, mainly because I can't try first.
 
Many developers get it wrong. I think many purposefully put their worst level in because they want the best stuff for the game. A good example is Uncharted
 
Russtic said:
The demo sold me on the game and I love every hour I have put in it. I dont know whats wrong with the rest of you freedom haters.
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In the case of Burnout the demo didn't do a good job of demonstrating the extent of the full game. Although you had a reasonably large area to play around in they had so few events (with no road rage or marked man), and no showtime, plus you only got one car. What would have been really great is if they let you save your progress in the demo (events won, billboards and gates smashed, jumps) then transfer that to the full game.
 
Die Squirrel Die said:
In the case of Burnout the demo didn't do a good job of demonstrating the extent of the full game. Although you had a reasonably large area to play around in they had so few events (with no road rage or marked man), and no showtime, plus you only got one car. What would have been really great is if they let you save your progress in the demo (events won, billboards and gates smashed, jumps) then transfer that to the full game.
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Every game should do this in some way or shape.
 
Simple facts:

1. If demo sucks, sales will suck (besides a few exceptional that people wud buy no matter what).

2. If demo is great, but repetitive and fulfills the need of entire game, sales will suck.

3. If demo is great and leaves you hungry for more, sales will be great.
 
These are ass-backward statistics. A large number of people who download the demo never intended to buy the game anyway. They shouldn't expect a demo to automatically equal a game sale and then consider it a failure if it doesn't.
 
Hm, I can't say for sure whether this study is correct, but I do know that I've had the Halo: Combat Evolved and BFII:SWoWWII demo installed for years now. I still enjoy playing them and never really decided to buy the full versions. *shrugs*
 
They charted the PS3's sales but doesn't the 360 more frequently have a demo of a game before its release? Even so, it doesn't take a genius to figure out what games have benefited from a demo, which wouldn't need a demo, and ones that shouldn't have a demo.
 
The study can kiss my ass.

So can all the people who claim those who download demos are "cheap".

$60 is a lot to drop on something I've only seen video of. Anybody who says otherwise has an excess of disposable income and should distribute it to the less fortunate. There've been too many times where I've seen a video of a game and bought it based on what I saw and it was awful.

I will, without hesitation, buy a game I have played a demo of (and liked) before I will buy a game I have heard good things about but never demoed in person.
 
A demo can give a new IP exposure and if it is good, it will can garner sales for it. If you have a lackluster demo, then obviously it can hurt sales. Also, for those like me who do not rent games would feel much safer downloading a demo to see if a game is worth my hard earned $60.
 
I had little to no interest in Crackdown or Skate... then I played the demos for both, bought the games, and loved the hell out of both of them. I think the lesson should be "don't put out a shit demo".
 
Damn - now I'm nervous about high-stakes demos coming up this year, and I'm not the one who's spent years and millions of dollars making the games.
 
I've gotten Flatout due to its demo. I almost missed out on Blue Dragon due to its demo. Those are the extreme sides of the pendulum for me.
 
Rather than reiterate that which has been stated ad nauseum in this thread, I'll just say that quite a few XBLA devs would probably disagree with this study.
 
C4Lukins said:
In the 360's case, they typically do not release demos for their bigger games. Correct me if I am wrong, but Halo 3, COD4, Gears of War, Oblivion, Mass Effect, and Assassins Creed did not have demos. When a game has a massive marketing budget, I guess they really do not see the need when all it can do is hurt them. For games like Bioshock, Crackdown, and Viva Pinata though, these are games that had little mainstream recognition so good demos probably helped them out. I think it can only hurt a game when it is highly anticipated and the demo is shit. I think these numbers are going to be a bit skewed just because the bigger releases that the companies know are going to sell tend not to have a demo.
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Halo 3 and COD4 had a beta,
 
Sega1991 said:
Beta != Demo. Betas are usually too select.
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In both cases they were pretty big and the beta was pretty much a glorified demo as they were very polished already.

The H3 beta reached a bigger audience than a lot of the normal demos. I'm sure COD4 did too.
 
Tieno said:
In both cases they were pretty big and the beta was pretty much a glorified demo as they were very polished already.

The H3 beta reached a bigger audience than a lot of the normal demos.
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They were basically time limited multiplayer demos, which is exactly the right format for that type of game.
 
i think its very plausible...

from a publishers view, they should release a demo after the game has been released, maybe a week or two...that way they generate more word of mouth after the majority of sales have happened
 
i suspect that on the whole this will always be true. the vast majority of games out there aren't that great, and when people have the chance to play them first for a bit, they'd pass on the majority. i think these will always outweigh the few that stand out.
 
This is basically the same argument that rentals hurt sales. It's still just as wrong.

Read:
1. They would only hurt sales of BAD GAMES.
 
Hopefully this info can be semi-useful in the future, like how certain movie studios no longer show previews to critics to avoid bad reception.
 
Psychotext said:
This. Massively flawed.
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Agreed. This is a horrible study. There is no controlled variable in this data. The only way to make this conclusion would be to release the same game to 2 different groups of people. Give 1 group the demo and don't give the other group a demo. Then see who buys it the majority of the time.

Until that happens you can't compare a game with a demo to one without. They aren't the same game.
 
After downloading hundreds of demos... I can't think of a single game that I've actually bought after playing the demo.

zaidr said:
The reason I bought Lost Planet was because I played the demos.
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The reason I didn't buy Lost Planet was because I played the demo. And I bought a 360 (in part) for that game.
 
PantherLotus said:
This is basically the same argument that rentals hurt sales. It's still just as wrong.

Read:
1. They would only hurt sales of BAD GAMES.
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I can see rentals being much more detrimental to game sales than demos. At least with a demo, you are only seeing a small portion of the game. You can typically experience the entire game with a rental.
 
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