The loss of demos especially sucks since when playing PC lower end, i'd love to use them as a way to tell if my computer can actually run the game or not. The specs rarely tell me anything sometimes where it looks like I couldn't run it but can actually, or the other way around. Console wise I don't think you have to worry that part so much, but would still be nice to have regardless to see if you like the gameplay.
I don't understand how game demos could ever die out. Especially now that games have gone the direction they have & are priced the way they are. If it's a good game, a ton of people will get it if the demo is good. It's the best sales tactic
I personally feel like a demo should be required if it's a game that is priced over the $60 USD price point. It's definitely great for those on the fence, but I think that's what game publishers fear: If the demo sucks, that potential player won't buy the game. So to avoid the high risk, they've been releasing titles without them. It gives us no chance to try the game for ourselves so our only option is to buy it if its something we want to play. That's how publishers see it now I feel like. It's a bit shady if I do say so myself, but that's the age we live in now unfortunately. Game reviews help out a lot when deciding to buy something, but there's no better way than to try the game out yourself.
@@StrictlyMediocreThe quality of modern videogames is declining very fast, the publishers know that if they add demos, no one will buy their shitty games *cough* Starfield *cough*
@@Ananonymousguy-nk9oj bro using Starfield as an example meanwhile we've had shit like gollum get released. Like if you're gonna give an example at least give a good example of the decline.
@@thegoldenatlas753 there have always been bad games like gollum. Bad games like starfield are far less common and appear to be a growing trend in the past decade.
One of the best game demos i've ever played was for Bravely Second on the 3DS, A literal brand new story exclusive to the demo that tied into the full game as a sort of prologue, showed the game and what it was capable of, a few hours of gameplay, secrets, etc. I think the main reason it worked was because it left a lot of unanswered questions that would be explained in the full game, depending on how far you got in the demo, you'd get rewards if linked with the full game, and the fact that the few hours of content that made it seem like a game unto itself was nothing compared to the main game, made it work.
Oh yeah, that was another thing that made demos work well: Content or items that transfer over to the full game. Such a neat feature that very few demos ever did (granted, not all demos could do this.)
Im relativeley new to gaming, so the first demo I tried was a resident evil 2 remake one, on my laptop. It didnt run well, i remember that the walls of the RPD were invisible and it was unplayable. But I had never seen a game so realistic, and I managed to play a bit of it while trying not to bump into objects that didnt load or invisible walls. I was so amazed, I ended up buying the game and playing it on my mothers laptop, which could handle the graphics. That was the first game I ever bought, and I still play it over and over again to this day. After that experience I used demos to see if they could run on my laptop, and back then i thought that every game should have a demo so you could at least know if it would run well. Now, i bought a pc with better specs and just now, after watching this video, i realise that i havent used any demos or worried about the game running well on it at all! Idk, i just wanted to leave my experience with demos here, and excuse my english lol, also great video!
During the PS1 era of video games, Insomniac Games and Naughty Dog decided to put demos within their own games. In crash 3 you can input a code and you can play a demo of Spyro 1, and I think with Spyro you can play a demo of crash bash. They where separate game devs but they where cool with each other enough to borrow resources and input a demo in each others games. You dont see any game dev do this anymore
Besides Terraria an Minecraft they both have some the largest sells ever an part this can easily be that everytime you open one up its goes hey buddy I have a friend who wants to meet you
Wow, this video brought back some great memories of the golden era of video game demos. I remember those Pizza Hut CDs and demo discs on magazine covers vividly. The shift in marketing strategies over the years, especially with the rise of online platforms and content creators, is fascinating. The Minecraft Xbox 360 demo with the timer feature was indeed a genius move, creating a sense of urgency to buy the full game. It's interesting to see how the landscape has changed, with AAA companies moving away from demos due to potential negative impacts on sales. The Steam Next Festivals offering a platform for indie developers to showcase their demos is a breath of fresh air. It's a reminder of how demos can be crucial for smaller developers to get their games noticed and heard. Thanks for taking us on this nostalgic journey and shedding light on the evolution of video game marketing!
you don’t know how many times i played the demo of Sly 2 until 3 came out and was my first actual full Sly game, one of my favorite game sagas since i was a kid
Likewise. That sly 2 demo was perfect, and I remember how awe struck I was when I first discovered it. Having to press buttons on the controller in a certain sequence was such a neat way to bring it up. Very reminiscent to when you would use cheat codes from those books you'd buy at the book fairs in school.
I think its really funny that Nintendo, Capcom, and Square Enix, 3 Japanese companies notorious for their anti-consumer practices, are the ones still releasing demos. They consistently put out high quality games though so the confidence is warranted.
I still have some PS1 and PS2 demos from when I was a kid, they usually came from magazines but some would come from cereal box's and fast food places. They where great for me because I'd only get 2 games a year when I was a kid, 1 for my birthday and 1 for Christmas so these demo's where great to find a game I like and give me something new to play between Christmas and my birthday.
this was awesome. a few months ago i had gotten the random urge to look for a video about exactly this, but it didnt exist. a demo i think is special is the one for mafia 2. it lets you play a certain story mission, and ends on a cliffhanger to motivate you to buy the game and see what happens, but that cliffhanger isnt actually in the in-game mission, which just has a different ending lol
Mafia 2. Man. I remember playing that one. I drove around for hours in that demo, and if I remember correctly, there was a timer on that one too right?
@@StrictlyMediocre ooo im not sure actually!but i did just remember another really interesting element which was that the demo actually had you start the mission in a house you don’t have till later in the game than when the mission really happens. i think they also switched the weather to either be sunny instead of snowy, or vice versa (the opposite of whatever was in the actual mission) wonder if there was a certain reason like avoiding spoilers that made them make those changes, or if that was just how it originally was
Great video and in my humble opinion. The disappearance of demo games is a multifaceted phenomenon with several contributing factors. One major influence is the evolution of distribution methods, particularly the dominance of online platforms. Developers often opt for releasing full games directly on these platforms, bypassing the traditional approach of creating standalone demo versions. This shift is driven by the convenience and accessibility offered by digital distribution, allowing users to access the complete gaming experience with just a few clicks.
personally I feel that the reason for lower sales for games with demos vs games with only a trailer is that demos filter out purchases of games that are not fun but look cool in the trailer. Not as much because people are satisfied with the content in the demo, although that might happen occasionally. If I like a demo I usually buy the game. Kids rarely buy games for themselves though. They can just play free-to-play stuff like fortnite. They've been doing that forever too, look at how big runescape and flash games were. They're good for consumers and bad for profits. I see AAA companies moving away from releasing demos as them trying to trick people into buying lower quality games that are cheaper to make by spending a lot of money on cool trailers. The average game is also averagely fun, successfully deceiving people is usually going to give a better ROI than being honest unless your game is as good as minecraft. If no man's sky had a demo, day one sales would have been a fraction of what they were and I would have saved $60. I gave it more than a two hour chance so I couldn't get a refund. Personally even after all the updates I still don't like it. I'm sure they're glad they took my money and executives still look at their powerpoints and pat themselves on the back, but I'm still bitter about it lol. They'd make less money if they were more honest but I don't care. I want to get the most out of my money by buying things I like. I do not want to get tricked into making bobby kotick more rich. This deception probably contributed a lot to why so many seventy dollar games are now practically unplayable on release. Luckily indies releasing demos is great for sales for all the reasons you mentioned. Feels like a big part of why a lot of people are now saying indies are more fun than most AAAs. It's very cutthroat and the only why to survive is to make something actually fun and prove it.
You hit the nail on the head. It was decided that gamers would be left out in the cold like every other group of “consumers”. Why not? What makes them special? They are fanatical about fictious worlds. And then in marched all of the sales and marketing types to make sure every drop was squeezed out of everybody involved in the whole process of making video games, inside and outside the company.
Steam returns and gameplay videos are great, but the issue is you generally have to be looking for the game first. The great thing about demo discs was that you could see games you wouldn't even think to look at, and without having to deal with download times. One of my favorite games from that era I would likely never have touched had I not seen the demo. Fun fact: Back in the PS1 era, Wal-Mart (I think it was them) used to have TV's hooked up in video game sections. You could scan the barcode for the game and it would show a short clip of gameplay/cinematic/etc. Never understood why they were removed.
Well said and well done! I appreciate you taking the time to make a video like this and I hope more gamers get to see it. It truly was a special time during the start of the 7th console gen where for a good 3 or so years, it was mandatory on Xbox that your game had to have a playable demo. That's where I got to experience Skate, DMC, Bioshock, and many others. It was so rad and I've been a massive fan of the Next Fest.
I appreciate you taking time to watch and comment dude! Thank you! And wow I completely forgot to include the Bioshock demo. That's also up there as one of the great ones for me.
Heck, I got a few full lenght pc games from a box of cereal, Amazon trail, oregon trail, and a lego builder. But I still got a sony ps2 gamepack kicking around somewhere my dad bought before our local Sears closed.
I remember downloading the Forza Horizon 4 demo from the windows store. I lacked saving so with each launch of the game the progress would be reset. It encouraged me to buy the game because I liked it. After playing the game I watched the trailers and thought to myself that I would've never bought the game based on these boring trailers.
as a man who collects old PS1 demo's that were originally free i can tell you that demo's did not ruin sales of any game i wanna get. also there is just something about playing an unfinished game before it came out to get you excited to see the polish and the differences between versions i.e. resident evil 4 demo.
One of the last demos I played was the one for Aquaria. It was fantastic! It showed me what the game was about. It let me play around with the mechanics, immerse myself into the game world. And it blocked me from progressing into the deeper parts of the world and story but still hinted very pointedly at the fact that there is A LOT more to discover. So, every minute I spent in the demo made me want to buy and play the full version too. Which I did soon. It was pure genius.
Never heard of that one, but from the way you described it, that sounds like a perfect example of a great demo! Essentially, demos should be teasers, pieces of marketing that show off the game and what else it can off when you buy the full product. Being shown what more you can do but not be able to do it can be frustrating, but it's a good kind of frustrating. The kind that makes you go "damn I really want to go past this blockade and play more."
Excited to see a video discussing the evolution of video game demos! 🎮💡 It's interesting how the landscape has shifted over the years with the rise of digital platforms and early access models. I miss the days of playing demos on gaming magazines. 👾 #GamingEvolution #VideoGameDemos #GamerTalk
To add on to this, the demo can rarely represent the full game now. For example, when I buy a game on Steam, I would install it and test the game out. The important metrics for me are like: Does the game run on my PC? How is the optimization? Does this FPS game have FOV settings? Is the frame rate locked at 60? Can I switch to using PlayStation button prompts? Can I switch around the confirm buttons, making it O confirm instead of X confirm? Those are features that are often patched in post launch. Meanwhile, the demo build is hardly ever updated. As a result, I can be turned off by a demo, not knowing the full game actually does fulfill my needs.
Fun fact is that Pizza Hut had game demo discs because Reggie Fils-Aimé was head of marketing at the time (before he worked at Nintendo). 13:52 Putting a demo in another game reminds me of Zone of the Enders, everybody played that only to get the Metal Gear Solid 2 demo (but I genuinely liked Zone of the Enders, it's Kojima's take on the mecha genre).
Caddicarus has a huge video on Magazines an it so good to see that Mags an Demos are not dead I don't care if its not always gonna help a ton but in long run it makes us remember things I still can't forget all those odd personalities
Halloo! I used to play demo's on my 3DS, for me it felt like I was breaking the law cus- it was a free game- But Now with the E-shop closed, I am kinda sad I didn't play more demo's. Or buy the games from those respective demo's but I guess the memories are now 10 times more special and worth holding on to ig you can't re-experience them (in legitimate ways)
If it weren't for the Resident Evil 4 Remake demo I probably wouldn't have gotten the game. The gameplay and village fight was so good I've replayed the demo well over 10 times and instantly got it as soon as it released.
The only paid game I have currently is Minecraft (Java Edition), I played the demo until I convinced my mom to purchase it back when I was also 12 years old (my mom bought it about a week after my birthday) Guess who is a resource pack creator for the game and will be 14 in a few months?
Dang, I was _just_ thinking about video game demos, too! Was thinking about demos as a video idea, but i guess you beat me to it. Great vid! Btw, i just wanna mention the Dragon Quest 11 S demo. It was possibly the biggest demo I've played, going around 8 hours of playtime. The demo was so fun that it sold me on the game right after.
Game demos were the main and only reason I ever wanted to go to Walmart with my family as a child. Actually getting to play on a console where I didn’t one was always cool 😎. I remember playing my first (and only) lego starwars game this way.
I would have never played games like Metal hellsinger and Trepang 2 if they hadn’t had demos for me to try first. Demos still work and should still be made
I feel like at this point demos and early releases of games is a terrible practice in the indie game community. As an indie developer, we only get a few seconds in the spotlight, and things like Early Release have actaully plagued indie games that get attention early but don't have sufficient content time to capitalize on it. People will play Balatro's Demo and think it's cool and then get bored of it before the game ever releases. Keep a game cheap and make it a full game so you can get your money and move onto the next or try to hit big, but hitting big is a risk if you don't get the time right.
I gotta be the critic here, you can't forget that all games these days have a open beta before they launch their titel. First this was only with triple a games or the big publishers but actually you see this happening more often even with indie devs. Because you had a expierence with something and a sales man gives you a pitch saying it is like that doesn't make it like that. He is just trying to sell copies instead of letting people play part of hes game for free, you wer a kid and you friends also had no money. If you have 10 bucks and there are 10.000 things you wanna buy with it, you can expect this to happen... But now you an adult and you have for example sake 300 euro left over every month, out of the sudden a 60 euro game after you enjoyed the demo doesn't sound that bad. Also once again every game out there has a demo in it! from world of warcraft with the level cap or CoD with the free for all game modes. Even starcraft did it and it was a huge success at the beginning but blizzard was milking their product and everyone saw that. Free to play games are basically a demo because every free to play game has a way of premiums and once you go premium in a free to play game gamewise everything changes. Especially multiplayer games have a huge advantage from free to play users even if it limits them to a handful of maps. If you owned the game I bet you more likely to play the same maps rather than not play at all because there is no one else to play with at that moment in time. It brings population to your game which supports the pay to play users so no matter how you look at it, playing a map for free with owners of the game is a win for everyone. You don't wanna know how many games I bought because I played the demo and how many games I never touched because they had no demo. Everything this guy says 10:26 is pure bs, show me hes study and show me who paid for it... (study never happened)
I'm checking steam demos and freebies on a regular basis, and it seems that there's a trend to release demos as f2p named "... : Prologue" rather than flagging them as is. Some even give it a completely random name so you can't even tell anymore, like Intravenous 2 : Mercenarism. Maybe it just gives more visibility to flag a demo as f2p? Regardless I find it annoying lol.
in Croatia there was or is a magazine called Bug where you'd get a cd with demos for games and a bunch of other stuff and that was mostly what i played as a (really young) kid. my favorite demos were for men of war, codename panzers phase two, port royale 2, jets'n'guns...
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4:03 "There were three map areas you could explore within that time, retail stores like walmart, target, gamestop...." I thought that was all one sentence at first and was very confused lmao.
The only demo I remember playing for Sonic was the one for the 2006 "Sonic the Hedgehog." That demo was really strange though. For some reason, the demo felt waaay more polished than the actual level in the game. Looking back it now, I'm not sure what happened there.
I’m liking the resurgence of demos for fighting games. Street fighter 6 with one map and 2 character, both being the classic and new face of the series. Tekken 8 with 4 characters, 3 maps, and a few other modes. And GranBlue Versus rising which is just a free version of the game, where you get 4 characters to play, 3 of them being in rotation every week, meaning you can actually play the game with others online as if you own the game. Killer Instinct does this as well. And the resident evil series for the remakes and newer entries have all had demos. And my god, the hitman demo, the amount of hours put into that tutorial yacht party mission was so much fun. So much so, even when I got the game, I played the tutorial mission again and again
The video game demo era began with shareware, where developers released a level of their game for free on BBS and FTP servers. As technology advanced, consoles like PlayStation made demos cheaper and easier to produce. They were featured on magazine covers, in-store gaming stations, and even on DVDs as special features for movies. However, the rise of online marketing and UA-cam let-players changed the landscape. Developers realized creating demos was expensive and not as necessary. Pre-recorded footage and collaborations with UA-camrs became more popular. The 2-hour return model on platforms like Steam replaced the need for demos, allowing consumers to try games risk-free. AAA developers mostly abandoned demos, but some Japanese AAA developers still use them. The Steam Next Fest is an example of a modern event where indie developers showcase their demos.
You're welcome bro, and my most replayed demo was "War of the Monsters", and it came with like 2 maps with about 4 monsters, my brother and I played that demo so much there was no need to buy it. I didn't play during the haydays of demos, my dad wasn't hooked up for internet, plus I was just picking up a 360 for only 60 bucks that my second cousin gotten in trade for a doing tattoo back in the summer of 2011. It came with that crappy Medal of honor game (which was already broken) in its disk drive, but it had all the dlc for fallout 3 and when my little brother asked me what game he could get me, I told him just the base game of fallout 3, then he asked me if I was sure, that he could get me the whole thing. I just wish I could have seen his face when I told him it was okay, that my $60 360 already had it downloaded. Shitfire, I didn't even get online till 9 years later for the first time on my own acord in late 2020.
@@TheBearInTheChair Hooooly. War of the monsters sounded familiar when reading the comment, so when I looked it up, a bunch of memories came rushing back. I remember finding a used copy at a yardsale. It had a sticker with a price tag of $5. I was very young when I saw the game and thought it was King kong vs Transformers (yeah I was too young to make the distinction lol) That game was ridiculously fun. Such a random game that had no business being THAT good. That's a steal though. Most of the DLC's for Fallout 3 were great (I think Mothership Zeta was nice for weaponry but that's it) so I bet that was a game you spent weeks to months playing. My brother and I didn't get online for our consoles until around 2009. When we discovered the things we could do online for the Wii (that was our first console with online) it was legit life changing haha.
We found a way to reset the timer in the PC gamer Minecraft demo by deleting level.dat, and we played that over and over again. I even built a mansion.
The best demo I ever played was Dragon Quest XI's demo for Switch which let you play all the way to the end of the city Hotto. Which, for reference, ends up being around 7-10 hours of play if you do so normally. I was so hooked on that demo, my brother got me the full game and I still hadn't beaten the demo yet. It was around hour 4 that I was like "Damn! I really am going to have to buy this game now, huh?"
About that xbox graph... did it account for popularity of games and studios and stuff like that... did it compare, for example... only indie games... and did it include games that blew up even before people had the chance to play a demo... And if yes, as a consumer, that tells me that I should NOT buy games that do not have a demo, cause if the demo will make me not want to play it, then the full game will only give me 1-2 days of fun before I quit...
All those questions you raised are great. That’s definitely something I wish I addressed. There’s probably more sales and statistics that we don’t know about that publishers like Activision and EA know. Data that is kept private for whatever reasons they have. Unfortunately for players, that graph is all we can go off of for the moment.
There are actually some modern AAA games that have demos, even if just a few, one of those is The Division 2 by Ubisoft, it offered you access to the full game for quite a few hours of playtime, a generous level cap and carry over your progress once you buy it, that's the kind of demo that probably has too much content but i gotta say that it made me buy the game as soon as i hit the level cap and now it's become one of my favourite and most played games and i recommend everyone to play the demo
I used to play patapon 3 demo on my psp, the game had online. I was so impressed that I forced my parents to help me find the game in my country and buy it, we had to drive to shop that had it bc the ones near me didnt. still have the game and I love it
I remember first getting into Grand Strategy about 10 years ago with a purchase of Europa Universalis IV, because the demo alone had me hooked and I wanted to olay around with all the game features. I now have over 400 hours of playtime and went on to buy more games developed by Paradox Interactive. There's seems to be so much money in the industry for marketing budgets, but demos sometimes feel like an afterthought if they are even developed at all.
11:28 this is such a moronic thinking. Those games that on the top of chart don't need demos because they probably established titles like CoD, GoW, Halo, Fifa, NBA etc. Of course if you look at the sale numbers you'll see that the games without demos sale the most. Wow.
Great work! Do you have any issue with this video being referenced in a video I'm making on a ps1 demo disc? I'd like to potentially include a couple segments and references with the link to get here in my description.
Psvr has some free demos, some you get invested learning how to play that you are more interested to buy it afterwards, especially if it gets discounted maybe demos that are also time limit trials could prevent abusing the demo. I would like to see more demos that are self contained experiences or prequels to the base game. Something like MGS Ground Zeros, or PT demo. I don't like to spoil a games first level and then have to restart it again when I buy it
Something i am telling some devs to do is create sort of teaser worlds/environments in SocialVR platforms,Horizon Worlds,Roblox,VRChat, etc … doesn’t have to be extremely intricate and mindblowing but if the experience of these teaser worlds/environments are good people will be interested in checking the game out Just imagine you are in VRChat and Capcom created a world where you get to fight against a friend as a few of the newest StreetFighter characters.. that would definitely get people interested in checking the trailers and gameplay stuff out before considering to buy it.
The original Doom wasn't released in germany but the shareware demo was still accessible to download in many places online so it's all many people ever had
Nowadays, it is easier to get a feel for how games are without necessarily needing to play them. Also, some players are only interested in the story of games, and so they just need to watch a video on UA-cam covering all the relevant content, including secrets they normally wouldn't find themselves.
nah no mater what video you see your not fully gonna get something to click till you play I have played games myself an found the demo time or lets play viewing period more interesting then the full game an vice versa
I think demos and their effect on sales greatly depends on what the game is. Getting a taste of a game that already has a bunch of excitement around it could eat into sales because it can break down the hype, but if it’s a more niche game or something people are still on the fence about, it can be a great opportunity to get everyone on board. To use Nintendo’s recent releases as an example, there’s a reason Pikmin 4 got a demo and Mario Wonder didn’t. One’s a devoted, yet niche franchise that hasn’t had a mainline entry in a decade, where it made sense to test the waters and get people involved, while the other is a consistent series that will sell well either way, in which case it was probably better to let fans wait a bit longer.
Bro what is this video? Video game demos are bigger than ever before. It seems like every game has a demo now. Yakuza 6-8, Kiwami 2, Resident Evil 7/8/2-4, Devil May Cry 5, literally every single Square Enix game from Final Fantasy to Dragon Quest to Kingdom Hearts to Octopath Traveler to Triangle Strategy to Bravely Default II to all of their "cozy farm Sim bullshit" RPGs, Scarlet Nexus, Tales of Arise, Hitman 1-3, The World Ends With You, Final Fantasy VII Remake, Final Fantasy XVI, Lies of P, Pikmin 4, Fire Emblem Warriors, etc. I could go on and on. There have never been as many demos ever as there are today.
12:50 Almost all of the games you listed are from developers based in Japan, which if you watch the video at the time I listed, you’ll see that I go into detail about that.
i think the backlash of trailer only is people may think if its a scam/ripoff if they did not get what's on the video edit i know two titles demo on steam siege up powerlust its a port from mobile games to pc
Dragon Quest XI S has an excellent demo. I basically knew nothing about the dragon quest franchise apart from that it was the inspiration for many popular japanese games like Zelda and Pokemon. The demo gives you unlimited access to the game up until a certain point in the story (about 5 hours in). Definitely long enough to get you hooked on the story and gameplay. It was the first time in a LONG while that I got the opportunity to play through a game without being spoiled by trailers or youtube let's plays. I got sold by the game by playing the game.
Whats funny is that at least here in brazil the reason why nier automata sold so well was becase of the demo because nobody knew shit about nier or drakengard so it was literally people downloading the demo and saying "hey this is actually really freakin good i will buy it" But yeah i can see why publishers stopped doing it in some games (like perfect dark zero) the online of the demo was actually way more active then the real game purely because people didnt buy the game and stuff
Honestly if demos were standard again, it would give devs reason to not make a shit game. Like it at least shows you're confident behind what you're making when you release a demo.
*from 2000 to 2008, all I did was scower eBay for hours a day looking for PS and Xbox demos to buy lol. i literally had like 2 full games and 50 demo discs 😂 there was just so much variety back then, Everybody had a demo out. today we have F2P games, which are basically Evolved Demos 🕵 but nothing will ever come close to those old sleeved and plastic covered magazine demo days* 🙌
The problem with spending resources to make a demo is that it's the exact same outcome as if someone pirated it. It's completely depricated. If someone wants to try before they buy they can, you don't need to go out of your way to make that possible.
Nothing happened to them - a Steam user. Seriously, you can still get demos of games on Steam, Nintendo Switch, and to a lesser extent Xbox. Sony are the main ones taking them away. As long as developers still make them, they won't go anywhere. Now those funky anti-piracy measures in games are a real lost art; all the funny ways devs screwed with people who didn't pay like making things break or adding quirky messages in-game to pirates. Those are the real loss these days.
Good point. Admittedly, I didn’t think to expand my topics outside of America and Japan. I’ll be sure to be more aware of everywhere else in the world. Thanks for pointing this out to me!
Not all games can be sussed out in < 2hrs, which means that yes I'll spend like an hour - 75 minutes, and if it turns out that I'm not liking it enough. Then I'll refund it on the chance that 2hrs 10 minutes it turns to Ash, not Gold. Hurting them more than me.
I liked this video a lot. I would love to “like” this video and help you out but UA-cam compiles all of my likes into a big playlist and I find that annoying and cluttered so in order to keep my playlist from flooding itself with a bunch of videos from all different genres….you only get a comment. It’s UA-cam’s fault. If I could like without it being added to a playlist, I’d like all the videos that I actually liked. If “likes” were its own section instead of a playlist a lot more creators would get the likes they asked for……let’s get UA-cam to change this somehow
"has seemingly gone to a downward trend" tell me you exclusively play tripple a titles without telling me you exclusively play tripple a titles people should play more indie games, cause the absolute OPPOSITE is true, demos are massively on the rise everywhere
*this whole comment* tell me you didn’t watch the end of the video without telling me you didn’t watch the end of the video. 12:50 is when I talk about who still creates them and I bring up steam next fest which is solely dedicated to indie developers releasing demos for their games. So if you wanna skip and watch that, there you go.
@@Maethendias “has SEEMINGLY gone on a downward trend” Like you said, not a lot of people play indie games and know about all the demos that are still offered from them. A majority of my friends have asked this exact question. They’re people that just haven’t given indie games a chance. To the general game audience, they’ve disappeared. Which is why I said “seemingly” lol. It seems like they’ve gone on a downward trend, but in recent years, it’s the opposite like you said.
With how many game makers release super buggy games that might even be practically unplayable these days, including ones that are supposed to be AAA games, yeah it's obvious why they wouldn't want to let people demo the game before buying it.
You have to have a checklist for a demo to work It should be well priced so you get more money from players you did draw in and the ones that leave If the person who plays your game likes it, they might buy it and give nice reviews while driving off people who would not like the game(especially for more niche genres). You may lose on sales of corse. You can draw in more players after the game’s release by releasing the demo after the game after sales slow down, because you would not get much more sales anyway. You can ignore this one The demo should show what you can get, have a really good to get the game as well The demo should not have too much of the game in it. Should be same quality as the game It’s weird since you should be able to put out 2 hour demos like minecraft and it holding your save hostage basically like steam refunds if you put it on steam, basically mimiking the refund system, but making the game free before then, but keeping your progress from you. Probably the reason demos make games sell worse is because trailers you can put anything you want in it but not for demos which is limited to the scope of the player would see in game for real, not only that most people who actually would play the demo are the people who are intrested in the game, so if that makes them disintrested you just lost a sale. There are so many ways a demo could make the sales worse. Especially for a bad game. There are a lot of games i hear good things about and when i buy and play it i dont like it.(people call this 99% is crap, because 99% of stuff you see you probably will ignore it because you think you would not like it. Personally i found my favorite games in spite of this and just playing a random game i never heard of. Its true to an extent but you will never know if you like it until you try. It works for and against demos) (the large corporation video game market todAy tries to scoop all the money from you. And they know how to do it, like really well. The only type of game i knot that does not apply to is gatcha games due to its unique money making design. Everyone needs to stop buying bad games, just wait a bit and see if its good before wasting cash even if you are tempted by stupid preorder benifits, Pokemon is a really good example of this, it makes a stupid amount of sales despite being pretty terrible with their marketing stragies, most nintendo games also do this. Older games are still good. If you release a bad indie game. Of corse playing a demo would ruin quite a bit of this. Also if people were less stupid when buying, demos would be more favorible.) this is a bit of a long and pretty disorganized comment. But you read it(or not so don’t say it) I put too much info here probably.
Yeah but if you only see a trailer, you buy the game, and it's not what you expected. You return it, and the company suffers hate. At least demo's were honest and more polished.
Getting a demo out for people to play takes a bite out of those day 1 sales. Cooperative and single player doesnt inspire as much need to buy things to show off to others. So much has been adopted from the Mobile way of gaming; it leads to so many disgusting and hilarious failures of game releases
Eh demos are available on ps4 and switch in the store section, but as you said mostly japanese developers. But i do think a big reason why is due to open beta testing culture taking over
"The demo cut our sales in half" translates to "the demo does not allow us to lie on the trailer"
The day before almost dying the day after
The loss of demos especially sucks since when playing PC lower end, i'd love to use them as a way to tell if my computer can actually run the game or not. The specs rarely tell me anything sometimes where it looks like I couldn't run it but can actually, or the other way around.
Console wise I don't think you have to worry that part so much, but would still be nice to have regardless to see if you like the gameplay.
I don't understand how game demos could ever die out. Especially now that games have gone the direction they have & are priced the way they are. If it's a good game, a ton of people will get it if the demo is good. It's the best sales tactic
I personally feel like a demo should be required if it's a game that is priced over the $60 USD price point. It's definitely great for those on the fence, but I think that's what game publishers fear: If the demo sucks, that potential player won't buy the game. So to avoid the high risk, they've been releasing titles without them. It gives us no chance to try the game for ourselves so our only option is to buy it if its something we want to play. That's how publishers see it now I feel like. It's a bit shady if I do say so myself, but that's the age we live in now unfortunately. Game reviews help out a lot when deciding to buy something, but there's no better way than to try the game out yourself.
@@StrictlyMediocreThe quality of modern videogames is declining very fast, the publishers know that if they add demos, no one will buy their shitty games *cough* Starfield *cough*
@@Ananonymousguy-nk9oj bro using Starfield as an example meanwhile we've had shit like gollum get released.
Like if you're gonna give an example at least give a good example of the decline.
@@thegoldenatlas753I used Starfield as an example because i played it and it's a great example of bad quality
@@thegoldenatlas753 there have always been bad games like gollum. Bad games like starfield are far less common and appear to be a growing trend in the past decade.
One of the best game demos i've ever played was for Bravely Second on the 3DS, A literal brand new story exclusive to the demo that tied into the full game as a sort of prologue, showed the game and what it was capable of, a few hours of gameplay, secrets, etc. I think the main reason it worked was because it left a lot of unanswered questions that would be explained in the full game, depending on how far you got in the demo, you'd get rewards if linked with the full game, and the fact that the few hours of content that made it seem like a game unto itself was nothing compared to the main game, made it work.
Oh yeah, that was another thing that made demos work well: Content or items that transfer over to the full game. Such a neat feature that very few demos ever did (granted, not all demos could do this.)
Pokemon ORAS did something like that too
this is unintentionally a great case for physical used games
Im relativeley new to gaming, so the first demo I tried was a resident evil 2 remake one, on my laptop. It didnt run well, i remember that the walls of the RPD were invisible and it was unplayable. But I had never seen a game so realistic, and I managed to play a bit of it while trying not to bump into objects that didnt load or invisible walls. I was so amazed, I ended up buying the game and playing it on my mothers laptop, which could handle the graphics. That was the first game I ever bought, and I still play it over and over again to this day. After that experience I used demos to see if they could run on my laptop, and back then i thought that every game should have a demo so you could at least know if it would run well. Now, i bought a pc with better specs and just now, after watching this video, i realise that i havent used any demos or worried about the game running well on it at all! Idk, i just wanted to leave my experience with demos here, and excuse my english lol, also great video!
Road To Vostok uses its demo as a gameplay test simultaneously. I think that's pretty genius.
During the PS1 era of video games, Insomniac Games and Naughty Dog decided to put demos within their own games. In crash 3 you can input a code and you can play a demo of Spyro 1, and I think with Spyro you can play a demo of crash bash. They where separate game devs but they where cool with each other enough to borrow resources and input a demo in each others games. You dont see any game dev do this anymore
Besides Terraria an Minecraft they both have some the largest sells ever an part this can easily be that everytime you open one up its goes hey buddy I have a friend who wants to meet you
why would it ruin the sale of a game I had NO MONEY to buy in the first place??
Wow, this video brought back some great memories of the golden era of video game demos. I remember those Pizza Hut CDs and demo discs on magazine covers vividly. The shift in marketing strategies over the years, especially with the rise of online platforms and content creators, is fascinating. The Minecraft Xbox 360 demo with the timer feature was indeed a genius move, creating a sense of urgency to buy the full game.
It's interesting to see how the landscape has changed, with AAA companies moving away from demos due to potential negative impacts on sales. The Steam Next Festivals offering a platform for indie developers to showcase their demos is a breath of fresh air. It's a reminder of how demos can be crucial for smaller developers to get their games noticed and heard.
Thanks for taking us on this nostalgic journey and shedding light on the evolution of video game marketing!
you don’t know how many times i played the demo of Sly 2 until 3 came out and was my first actual full Sly game, one of my favorite game sagas since i was a kid
Likewise. That sly 2 demo was perfect, and I remember how awe struck I was when I first discovered it. Having to press buttons on the controller in a certain sequence was such a neat way to bring it up. Very reminiscent to when you would use cheat codes from those books you'd buy at the book fairs in school.
I think its really funny that Nintendo, Capcom, and Square Enix, 3 Japanese companies notorious for their anti-consumer practices, are the ones still releasing demos. They consistently put out high quality games though so the confidence is warranted.
I still have some PS1 and PS2 demos from when I was a kid, they usually came from magazines but some would come from cereal box's and fast food places.
They where great for me because I'd only get 2 games a year when I was a kid, 1 for my birthday and 1 for Christmas so these demo's where great to find a game I like and give me something new to play between Christmas and my birthday.
Huh, this really helped contextualise why we don't see demos as much anymore. Thanks for sharing!
this was awesome. a few months ago i had gotten the random urge to look for a video about exactly this, but it didnt exist. a demo i think is special is the one for mafia 2. it lets you play a certain story mission, and ends on a cliffhanger to motivate you to buy the game and see what happens, but that cliffhanger isnt actually in the in-game mission, which just has a different ending lol
Mafia 2. Man. I remember playing that one. I drove around for hours in that demo, and if I remember correctly, there was a timer on that one too right?
@@StrictlyMediocre ooo im not sure actually!but i did just remember another really interesting element which was that the demo actually had you start the mission in a house you don’t have till later in the game than when the mission really happens. i think they also switched the weather to either be sunny instead of snowy, or vice versa (the opposite of whatever was in the actual mission) wonder if there was a certain reason like avoiding spoilers that made them make those changes, or if that was just how it originally was
Hearing PS1 and PS2 launch sounds shivers me timbers
Great video and in my humble opinion. The disappearance of demo games is a multifaceted phenomenon with several contributing factors. One major influence is the evolution of distribution methods, particularly the dominance of online platforms. Developers often opt for releasing full games directly on these platforms, bypassing the traditional approach of creating standalone demo versions. This shift is driven by the convenience and accessibility offered by digital distribution, allowing users to access the complete gaming experience with just a few clicks.
personally I feel that the reason for lower sales for games with demos vs games with only a trailer is that demos filter out purchases of games that are not fun but look cool in the trailer. Not as much because people are satisfied with the content in the demo, although that might happen occasionally. If I like a demo I usually buy the game. Kids rarely buy games for themselves though. They can just play free-to-play stuff like fortnite. They've been doing that forever too, look at how big runescape and flash games were. They're good for consumers and bad for profits.
I see AAA companies moving away from releasing demos as them trying to trick people into buying lower quality games that are cheaper to make by spending a lot of money on cool trailers. The average game is also averagely fun, successfully deceiving people is usually going to give a better ROI than being honest unless your game is as good as minecraft. If no man's sky had a demo, day one sales would have been a fraction of what they were and I would have saved $60. I gave it more than a two hour chance so I couldn't get a refund. Personally even after all the updates I still don't like it. I'm sure they're glad they took my money and executives still look at their powerpoints and pat themselves on the back, but I'm still bitter about it lol. They'd make less money if they were more honest but I don't care. I want to get the most out of my money by buying things I like. I do not want to get tricked into making bobby kotick more rich.
This deception probably contributed a lot to why so many seventy dollar games are now practically unplayable on release. Luckily indies releasing demos is great for sales for all the reasons you mentioned. Feels like a big part of why a lot of people are now saying indies are more fun than most AAAs. It's very cutthroat and the only why to survive is to make something actually fun and prove it.
You hit the nail on the head. It was decided that gamers would be left out in the cold like every other group of “consumers”. Why not? What makes them special? They are fanatical about fictious worlds. And then in marched all of the sales and marketing types to make sure every drop was squeezed out of everybody involved in the whole process of making video games, inside and outside the company.
Steam returns and gameplay videos are great, but the issue is you generally have to be looking for the game first. The great thing about demo discs was that you could see games you wouldn't even think to look at, and without having to deal with download times. One of my favorite games from that era I would likely never have touched had I not seen the demo.
Fun fact: Back in the PS1 era, Wal-Mart (I think it was them) used to have TV's hooked up in video game sections. You could scan the barcode for the game and it would show a short clip of gameplay/cinematic/etc. Never understood why they were removed.
Well said and well done! I appreciate you taking the time to make a video like this and I hope more gamers get to see it. It truly was a special time during the start of the 7th console gen where for a good 3 or so years, it was mandatory on Xbox that your game had to have a playable demo. That's where I got to experience Skate, DMC, Bioshock, and many others. It was so rad and I've been a massive fan of the Next Fest.
I appreciate you taking time to watch and comment dude! Thank you! And wow I completely forgot to include the Bioshock demo. That's also up there as one of the great ones for me.
Heck, I got a few full lenght pc games from a box of cereal, Amazon trail, oregon trail, and a lego builder. But I still got a sony ps2 gamepack kicking around somewhere my dad bought before our local Sears closed.
My man really used the bridge clip for PewDiePie LMAO
I remember downloading the Forza Horizon 4 demo from the windows store. I lacked saving so with each launch of the game the progress would be reset. It encouraged me to buy the game because I liked it. After playing the game I watched the trailers and thought to myself that I would've never bought the game based on these boring trailers.
as a man who collects old PS1 demo's that were originally free i can tell you that demo's did not ruin sales of any game i wanna get. also there is just something about playing an unfinished game before it came out to get you excited to see the polish and the differences between versions i.e. resident evil 4 demo.
Omar’s new video is an absolute gem or whatever those two guys are in about still a good video
Same, I was typing out my second comment and was surprised by the copypasta when I posted it.
truly weird behavior@@TheBearInTheChair
yeah I truly don't know what they're on about lol.
Thank you though man!
One of the last demos I played was the one for Aquaria. It was fantastic! It showed me what the game was about. It let me play around with the mechanics, immerse myself into the game world. And it blocked me from progressing into the deeper parts of the world and story but still hinted very pointedly at the fact that there is A LOT more to discover. So, every minute I spent in the demo made me want to buy and play the full version too. Which I did soon. It was pure genius.
Never heard of that one, but from the way you described it, that sounds like a perfect example of a great demo! Essentially, demos should be teasers, pieces of marketing that show off the game and what else it can off when you buy the full product. Being shown what more you can do but not be able to do it can be frustrating, but it's a good kind of frustrating. The kind that makes you go "damn I really want to go past this blockade and play more."
Tekken 8, Street Fighter 6, Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising.
All those games are modern games with demos.
Excited to see a video discussing the evolution of video game demos! 🎮💡 It's interesting how the landscape has shifted over the years with the rise of digital platforms and early access models. I miss the days of playing demos on gaming magazines. 👾 #GamingEvolution #VideoGameDemos #GamerTalk
To add on to this, the demo can rarely represent the full game now.
For example, when I buy a game on Steam, I would install it and test the game out. The important metrics for me are like: Does the game run on my PC? How is the optimization? Does this FPS game have FOV settings? Is the frame rate locked at 60? Can I switch to using PlayStation button prompts? Can I switch around the confirm buttons, making it O confirm instead of X confirm?
Those are features that are often patched in post launch. Meanwhile, the demo build is hardly ever updated. As a result, I can be turned off by a demo, not knowing the full game actually does fulfill my needs.
Fun fact is that Pizza Hut had game demo discs because Reggie Fils-Aimé was head of marketing at the time (before he worked at Nintendo). 13:52 Putting a demo in another game reminds me of Zone of the Enders, everybody played that only to get the Metal Gear Solid 2 demo (but I genuinely liked Zone of the Enders, it's Kojima's take on the mecha genre).
Caddicarus has a huge video on Magazines an it so good to see that Mags an Demos are not dead
I don't care if its not always gonna help a ton but in long run it makes us remember things
I still can't forget all those odd personalities
9:46 This is the only responsible way to refer to pewdiepie.
Halloo! I used to play demo's on my 3DS, for me it felt like I was breaking the law cus- it was a free game- But Now with the E-shop closed, I am kinda sad I didn't play more demo's. Or buy the games from those respective demo's but I guess the memories are now 10 times more special and worth holding on to ig you can't re-experience them (in legitimate ways)
If it weren't for the Resident Evil 4 Remake demo I probably wouldn't have gotten the game. The gameplay and village fight was so good I've replayed the demo well over 10 times and instantly got it as soon as it released.
I pretty much didn't play any demos because most the games I played were just there after my dad had played them
The only paid game I have currently is Minecraft (Java Edition), I played the demo until I convinced my mom to purchase it back when I was also 12 years old (my mom bought it about a week after my birthday)
Guess who is a resource pack creator for the game and will be 14 in a few months?
Dang, I was _just_ thinking about video game demos, too! Was thinking about demos as a video idea, but i guess you beat me to it. Great vid!
Btw, i just wanna mention the Dragon Quest 11 S demo. It was possibly the biggest demo I've played, going around 8 hours of playtime. The demo was so fun that it sold me on the game right after.
Game demos were the main and only reason I ever wanted to go to Walmart with my family as a child. Actually getting to play on a console where I didn’t one was always cool 😎. I remember playing my first (and only) lego starwars game this way.
I would have never played games like Metal hellsinger and Trepang 2 if they hadn’t had demos for me to try first.
Demos still work and should still be made
Monster Hunter World
so many people joined the series from it
I feel like at this point demos and early releases of games is a terrible practice in the indie game community. As an indie developer, we only get a few seconds in the spotlight, and things like Early Release have actaully plagued indie games that get attention early but don't have sufficient content time to capitalize on it. People will play Balatro's Demo and think it's cool and then get bored of it before the game ever releases. Keep a game cheap and make it a full game so you can get your money and move onto the next or try to hit big, but hitting big is a risk if you don't get the time right.
this is another case of a few people on a few games is not the community as a whole
I gotta be the critic here, you can't forget that all games these days have a open beta before they launch their titel.
First this was only with triple a games or the big publishers but actually you see this happening more often even with indie devs.
Because you had a expierence with something and a sales man gives you a pitch saying it is like that doesn't make it like that.
He is just trying to sell copies instead of letting people play part of hes game for free, you wer a kid and you friends also had no money.
If you have 10 bucks and there are 10.000 things you wanna buy with it, you can expect this to happen...
But now you an adult and you have for example sake 300 euro left over every month, out of the sudden a 60 euro game after you enjoyed the demo doesn't sound that bad.
Also once again every game out there has a demo in it! from world of warcraft with the level cap or CoD with the free for all game modes.
Even starcraft did it and it was a huge success at the beginning but blizzard was milking their product and everyone saw that.
Free to play games are basically a demo because every free to play game has a way of premiums and once you go premium in a free to play game gamewise everything changes.
Especially multiplayer games have a huge advantage from free to play users even if it limits them to a handful of maps.
If you owned the game I bet you more likely to play the same maps rather than not play at all because there is no one else to play with at that moment in time.
It brings population to your game which supports the pay to play users so no matter how you look at it, playing a map for free with owners of the game is a win for everyone.
You don't wanna know how many games I bought because I played the demo and how many games I never touched because they had no demo.
Everything this guy says 10:26 is pure bs, show me hes study and show me who paid for it... (study never happened)
Yeah, the guy is a complete POS and embodies what has ruined gaming - profits over everything (PoE). That’s their game.
i cant come over. strictly mediocre dropped another banger
ayyyy 🙏
Demos were made for the CUSTOMERS (people forgot this word exist)
Trailers are indeed made for the consumers
I'm checking steam demos and freebies on a regular basis, and it seems that there's a trend to release demos as f2p named "... : Prologue" rather than flagging them as is.
Some even give it a completely random name so you can't even tell anymore, like Intravenous 2 : Mercenarism.
Maybe it just gives more visibility to flag a demo as f2p? Regardless I find it annoying lol.
in Croatia there was or is a magazine called Bug where you'd get a cd with demos for games and a bunch of other stuff and that was mostly what i played as a (really young) kid. my favorite demos were for men of war, codename panzers phase two, port royale 2, jets'n'guns...
Omar's new video is an absolute gem that captivated me from start to finish. The content is not only entertaining but also incredibly insightful, showcasing Omar's unique perspective and creativity. The seamless editing and engaging storytelling kept me hooked throughout, making it a standout piece in the vast world of online content. I particularly appreciated the way Omar seamlessly blended humor with meaningful insights, creating a video that not only made me laugh but also left me pondering its underlying messages. Kudos to Omar for consistently delivering top-notch content that never fails to leave a lasting impression. Can't wait for more!
4:03 "There were three map areas you could explore within that time, retail stores like walmart, target, gamestop...."
I thought that was all one sentence at first and was very confused lmao.
The minecraft PCG demo on pc was my introduction to minecraft. And it was amazing. I also played through the demo of Sonic3 countless times
The only demo I remember playing for Sonic was the one for the 2006 "Sonic the Hedgehog." That demo was really strange though. For some reason, the demo felt waaay more polished than the actual level in the game. Looking back it now, I'm not sure what happened there.
I’m liking the resurgence of demos for fighting games.
Street fighter 6 with one map and 2 character, both being the classic and new face of the series.
Tekken 8 with 4 characters, 3 maps, and a few other modes.
And GranBlue Versus rising which is just a free version of the game, where you get 4 characters to play, 3 of them being in rotation every week, meaning you can actually play the game with others online as if you own the game.
Killer Instinct does this as well.
And the resident evil series for the remakes and newer entries have all had demos.
And my god, the hitman demo, the amount of hours put into that tutorial yacht party mission was so much fun. So much so, even when I got the game, I played the tutorial mission again and again
Breh I remember when I would get demos in cereal boxes no cap.
"Actually, we don't want our customers to make educated financial decisions."
The video game demo era began with shareware, where developers released a level of their game for free on BBS and FTP servers. As technology advanced, consoles like PlayStation made demos cheaper and easier to produce. They were featured on magazine covers, in-store gaming stations, and even on DVDs as special features for movies.
However, the rise of online marketing and UA-cam let-players changed the landscape. Developers realized creating demos was expensive and not as necessary. Pre-recorded footage and collaborations with UA-camrs became more popular. The 2-hour return model on platforms like Steam replaced the need for demos, allowing consumers to try games risk-free.
AAA developers mostly abandoned demos, but some Japanese AAA developers still use them. The Steam Next Fest is an example of a modern event where indie developers showcase their demos.
What video game demo do you remember playing most?
Let me know in the comments below and as always thank you for watching!
You're welcome bro, and my most replayed demo was "War of the Monsters", and it came with like 2 maps with about 4 monsters, my brother and I played that demo so much there was no need to buy it.
I didn't play during the haydays of demos, my dad wasn't hooked up for internet, plus I was just picking up a 360 for only 60 bucks that my second cousin gotten in trade for a doing tattoo back in the summer of 2011. It came with that crappy Medal of honor game (which was already broken) in its disk drive, but it had all the dlc for fallout 3 and when my little brother asked me what game he could get me, I told him just the base game of fallout 3, then he asked me if I was sure, that he could get me the whole thing. I just wish I could have seen his face when I told him it was okay, that my $60 360 already had it downloaded. Shitfire, I didn't even get online till 9 years later for the first time on my own acord in late 2020.
@@TheBearInTheChair Hooooly. War of the monsters sounded familiar when reading the comment, so when I looked it up, a bunch of memories came rushing back. I remember finding a used copy at a yardsale. It had a sticker with a price tag of $5. I was very young when I saw the game and thought it was King kong vs Transformers (yeah I was too young to make the distinction lol) That game was ridiculously fun. Such a random game that had no business being THAT good.
That's a steal though. Most of the DLC's for Fallout 3 were great (I think Mothership Zeta was nice for weaponry but that's it) so I bet that was a game you spent weeks to months playing. My brother and I didn't get online for our consoles until around 2009. When we discovered the things we could do online for the Wii (that was our first console with online) it was legit life changing haha.
We found a way to reset the timer in the PC gamer Minecraft demo by deleting level.dat, and we played that over and over again. I even built a mansion.
THEY MADE A PIKMIN 4??? BRO I NEED TO PLAY ALL OF THESE NOW THAT I CAN COMPREHEND THINGS
The best demo I ever played was Dragon Quest XI's demo for Switch which let you play all the way to the end of the city Hotto. Which, for reference, ends up being around 7-10 hours of play if you do so normally. I was so hooked on that demo, my brother got me the full game and I still hadn't beaten the demo yet. It was around hour 4 that I was like "Damn! I really am going to have to buy this game now, huh?"
About that xbox graph... did it account for popularity of games and studios and stuff like that... did it compare, for example... only indie games... and did it include games that blew up even before people had the chance to play a demo...
And if yes, as a consumer, that tells me that I should NOT buy games that do not have a demo, cause if the demo will make me not want to play it, then the full game will only give me 1-2 days of fun before I quit...
All those questions you raised are great.
That’s definitely something I wish I addressed. There’s probably more sales and statistics that we don’t know about that publishers like Activision and EA know. Data that is kept private for whatever reasons they have. Unfortunately for players, that graph is all we can go off of for the moment.
There are actually some modern AAA games that have demos, even if just a few, one of those is The Division 2 by Ubisoft, it offered you access to the full game for quite a few hours of playtime, a generous level cap and carry over your progress once you buy it, that's the kind of demo that probably has too much content but i gotta say that it made me buy the game as soon as i hit the level cap and now it's become one of my favourite and most played games and i recommend everyone to play the demo
9:40 insane clip to use for the 1 second mention of pewdiepie
I used to play patapon 3 demo on my psp, the game had online. I was so impressed that I forced my parents to help me find the game in my country and buy it, we had to drive to shop that had it bc the ones near me didnt. still have the game and I love it
I remember first getting into Grand Strategy about 10 years ago with a purchase of Europa Universalis IV, because the demo alone had me hooked and I wanted to olay around with all the game features.
I now have over 400 hours of playtime and went on to buy more games developed by Paradox Interactive.
There's seems to be so much money in the industry for marketing budgets, but demos sometimes feel like an afterthought if they are even developed at all.
11:28 this is such a moronic thinking. Those games that on the top of chart don't need demos because they probably established titles like CoD, GoW, Halo, Fifa, NBA etc. Of course if you look at the sale numbers you'll see that the games without demos sale the most. Wow.
I love the steam next fest, I found so many great games there.
Great work! Do you have any issue with this video being referenced in a video I'm making on a ps1 demo disc? I'd like to potentially include a couple segments and references with the link to get here in my description.
Psvr has some free demos, some you get invested learning how to play that you are more interested to buy it afterwards, especially if it gets discounted
maybe demos that are also time limit trials could prevent abusing the demo.
I would like to see more demos that are self contained experiences or prequels to the base game. Something like MGS Ground Zeros, or PT demo. I don't like to spoil a games first level and then have to restart it again when I buy it
Something i am telling some devs to do is create sort of teaser worlds/environments in SocialVR platforms,Horizon Worlds,Roblox,VRChat, etc … doesn’t have to be extremely intricate and mindblowing but if the experience of these teaser worlds/environments are good people will be interested in checking the game out
Just imagine you are in VRChat and Capcom created a world where you get to fight against a friend as a few of the newest StreetFighter characters.. that would definitely get people interested in checking the trailers and gameplay stuff out before considering to buy it.
Great vid
Demos are not dissapearing, you all are buying them for 80$😂😊
The original Doom wasn't released in germany but the shareware demo was still accessible to download in many places online so it's all many people ever had
Nowadays, it is easier to get a feel for how games are without necessarily needing to play them.
Also, some players are only interested in the story of games, and so they just need to watch a video on UA-cam covering all the relevant content, including secrets they normally wouldn't find themselves.
nah no mater what video you see your not fully gonna get something to click till you play
I have played games myself an found the demo time or lets play viewing period more interesting then the full game an vice versa
I think demos and their effect on sales greatly depends on what the game is. Getting a taste of a game that already has a bunch of excitement around it could eat into sales because it can break down the hype, but if it’s a more niche game or something people are still on the fence about, it can be a great opportunity to get everyone on board. To use Nintendo’s recent releases as an example, there’s a reason Pikmin 4 got a demo and Mario Wonder didn’t. One’s a devoted, yet niche franchise that hasn’t had a mainline entry in a decade, where it made sense to test the waters and get people involved, while the other is a consistent series that will sell well either way, in which case it was probably better to let fans wait a bit longer.
3:07 I still have that. I still has Tomb Raider II staring Lara Croft inside, I hope it does cause the disc isn't in the box
As a kid i survived off Xbox 360 demos, I only had like 3 Xbox 360 games so demos were the only thing I had to look forward to besides Minecraft
i practically lived off of demos on the 360 when i was young
Bro what is this video? Video game demos are bigger than ever before. It seems like every game has a demo now. Yakuza 6-8, Kiwami 2, Resident Evil 7/8/2-4, Devil May Cry 5, literally every single Square Enix game from Final Fantasy to Dragon Quest to Kingdom Hearts to Octopath Traveler to Triangle Strategy to Bravely Default II to all of their "cozy farm Sim bullshit" RPGs, Scarlet Nexus, Tales of Arise, Hitman 1-3, The World Ends With You, Final Fantasy VII Remake, Final Fantasy XVI, Lies of P, Pikmin 4, Fire Emblem Warriors, etc.
I could go on and on. There have never been as many demos ever as there are today.
12:50
Almost all of the games you listed are from developers based in Japan, which if you watch the video at the time I listed, you’ll see that I go into detail about that.
@StrictlyMediocre Yeah, I only just started watching the vid. I figured Is should leave the comment anyway tho for the algorithm and shit
@@backupschmliff1156 haha you’re good! I had a feeling you had probably just started watching. Hope you enjoy it, and i appreciate the support!
I'd be curious to see someone analyze how the demo model transformed into free-to-play. Isn't that sort've a type of demo in a way?
Fine. I’ll subscribe.
i think the backlash of trailer only is people may think if its a scam/ripoff if they did not get what's on the video
edit
i know two titles demo on steam
siege up
powerlust
its a port from mobile games to pc
You overlooked f2p. When it was first conceived a lot of people conceptualized it as a demo that you buy features for.
Dragon Quest XI S has an excellent demo. I basically knew nothing about the dragon quest franchise apart from that it was the inspiration for many popular japanese games like Zelda and Pokemon. The demo gives you unlimited access to the game up until a certain point in the story (about 5 hours in). Definitely long enough to get you hooked on the story and gameplay. It was the first time in a LONG while that I got the opportunity to play through a game without being spoiled by trailers or youtube let's plays. I got sold by the game by playing the game.
Whats funny is that at least here in brazil the reason why nier automata sold so well was becase of the demo because nobody knew shit about nier or drakengard so it was literally people downloading the demo and saying "hey this is actually really freakin good i will buy it"
But yeah i can see why publishers stopped doing it in some games (like perfect dark zero) the online of the demo was actually way more active then the real game purely because people didnt buy the game and stuff
…maybe the ones that could be hacked into their full version due to dummy data being the full version
Honestly if demos were standard again, it would give devs reason to not make a shit game. Like it at least shows you're confident behind what you're making when you release a demo.
*from 2000 to 2008, all I did was scower eBay for hours a day looking for PS and Xbox demos to buy lol. i literally had like 2 full games and 50 demo discs 😂 there was just so much variety back then, Everybody had a demo out. today we have F2P games, which are basically Evolved Demos 🕵 but nothing will ever come close to those old sleeved and plastic covered magazine demo days* 🙌
The problem with spending resources to make a demo is that it's the exact same outcome as if someone pirated it. It's completely depricated. If someone wants to try before they buy they can, you don't need to go out of your way to make that possible.
Nothing happened to them - a Steam user.
Seriously, you can still get demos of games on Steam, Nintendo Switch, and to a lesser extent Xbox.
Sony are the main ones taking them away. As long as developers still make them, they won't go anywhere.
Now those funky anti-piracy measures in games are a real lost art; all the funny ways devs screwed with people who didn't pay like making things break or adding quirky messages in-game to pirates. Those are the real loss these days.
great video but a surprising amount of stuff you talk about is specific to America and not a global thing.
Good point.
Admittedly, I didn’t think to expand my topics outside of America and Japan. I’ll be sure to be more aware of everywhere else in the world. Thanks for pointing this out to me!
Not all games can be sussed out in < 2hrs, which means that yes I'll spend like an hour - 75 minutes, and if it turns out that I'm not liking it enough. Then I'll refund it on the chance that 2hrs 10 minutes it turns to Ash, not Gold. Hurting them more than me.
I liked this video a lot. I would love to “like” this video and help you out but UA-cam compiles all of my likes into a big playlist and I find that annoying and cluttered so in order to keep my playlist from flooding itself with a bunch of videos from all different genres….you only get a comment. It’s UA-cam’s fault. If I could like without it being added to a playlist, I’d like all the videos that I actually liked. If “likes” were its own section instead of a playlist a lot more creators would get the likes they asked for……let’s get UA-cam to change this somehow
"has seemingly gone to a downward trend"
tell me you exclusively play tripple a titles without telling me you exclusively play tripple a titles
people should play more indie games, cause the absolute OPPOSITE is true, demos are massively on the rise everywhere
*this whole comment*
tell me you didn’t watch the end of the video without telling me you didn’t watch the end of the video.
12:50 is when I talk about who still creates them and I bring up steam next fest which is solely dedicated to indie developers releasing demos for their games. So if you wanna skip and watch that, there you go.
@@StrictlyMediocre maybe you shouldnt make loaded statements at the beginning of your videos then
@@Maethendias
“has SEEMINGLY gone on a downward trend”
Like you said, not a lot of people play indie games and know about all the demos that are still offered from them. A majority of my friends have asked this exact question. They’re people that just haven’t given indie games a chance.
To the general game audience, they’ve disappeared. Which is why I said “seemingly” lol. It seems like they’ve gone on a downward trend, but in recent years, it’s the opposite like you said.
If they won't give you a demo,pirate the game to get a demo yourself.
I've been doing this for a while and bought several games that I've liked
100. They don't lose money, and we don't either lol.
With how many game makers release super buggy games that might even be practically unplayable these days, including ones that are supposed to be AAA games, yeah it's obvious why they wouldn't want to let people demo the game before buying it.
Funny how AAA demos died out around the time time when the AAA industry ran out of ideas and started repackaging the same games over and over again.
You have to have a checklist for a demo to work
It should be well priced so you get more money from players you did draw in and the ones that leave
If the person who plays your game likes it, they might buy it and give nice reviews while driving off people who would not like the game(especially for more niche genres). You may lose on sales of corse.
You can draw in more players after the game’s release by releasing the demo after the game after sales slow down, because you would not get much more sales anyway. You can ignore this one
The demo should show what you can get, have a really good to get the game as well
The demo should not have too much of the game in it.
Should be same quality as the game
It’s weird since you should be able to put out 2 hour demos like minecraft and it holding your save hostage basically like steam refunds if you put it on steam, basically mimiking the refund system, but making the game free before then, but keeping your progress from you. Probably the reason demos make games sell worse is because trailers you can put anything you want in it but not for demos which is limited to the scope of the player would see in game for real, not only that most people who actually would play the demo are the people who are intrested in the game, so if that makes them disintrested you just lost a sale. There are so many ways a demo could make the sales worse. Especially for a bad game. There are a lot of games i hear good things about and when i buy and play it i dont like it.(people call this 99% is crap, because 99% of stuff you see you probably will ignore it because you think you would not like it. Personally i found my favorite games in spite of this and just playing a random game i never heard of. Its true to an extent but you will never know if you like it until you try. It works for and against demos)
(the large corporation video game market todAy tries to scoop all the money from you. And they know how to do it, like really well. The only type of game i knot that does not apply to is gatcha games due to its unique money making design. Everyone needs to stop buying bad games, just wait a bit and see if its good before wasting cash even if you are tempted by stupid preorder benifits, Pokemon is a really good example of this, it makes a stupid amount of sales despite being pretty terrible with their marketing stragies, most nintendo games also do this. Older games are still good. If you release a bad indie game. Of corse playing a demo would ruin quite a bit of this. Also if people were less stupid when buying, demos would be more favorible.) this is a bit of a long and pretty disorganized comment. But you read it(or not so don’t say it) I put too much info here probably.
Stream start @ 0:55
Thanks bro! 👍
The games that they bring out now are demos with the lack of game that's playable
Activision-Blizzard replaced demos with "free weekend" trials.
Yeah but if you only see a trailer, you buy the game, and it's not what you expected. You return it, and the company suffers hate. At least demo's were honest and more polished.
Getting a demo out for people to play takes a bite out of those day 1 sales. Cooperative and single player doesnt inspire as much need to buy things to show off to others.
So much has been adopted from the Mobile way of gaming; it leads to so many disgusting and hilarious failures of game releases
Eh demos are available on ps4 and switch in the store section, but as you said mostly japanese developers. But i do think a big reason why is due to open beta testing culture taking over
It went from playing the game way before you paid. To paying for the game way before you play.