How do you determine when a game is worth your money? Many use reviews or Let’s Players on YouTube to determine if the game is worth their time and hard earned cash today, but a few console generations ago, demos were some of the best ways to see the game pre-release. Playing the game before the release date allowed consumers to draft up their own opinions on whether or not the game was worth their investment. Now, however, people will have trouble finding trial versions of new releases.
A search of the online marketplaces for Xbox One, Playstation 4 and Wii U for demos brought back some disappointing results. Xbox One’s marketplace contains the least amount, with only 23 demos. Wii U fared a little better, with 26 demos on the eShop. Leading the pack with 46 demos was the Playstation 4. While 46 demos may sound like a good amount, keep in mind that in the past, gaming magazines such as the Official Xbox Magazine and even restaurants like Pizza Hut would include discs full of demos every single month.
These demos could be quite long, as well. One demo disc from my childhood contained a demo for the Playstation One game, “Tomba!”, which presented a significant amount of the early portion of the game. On the Wii U, a demo for “NBA 2K13” forced me to play as a pre-determined team with settings for match length, sound settings, and even some visual effects locked, only accessible in the full version. While demos have always locked content away in an attempt to sway your opinion, the lack of settings in a more recent demo ultimately steered me away from purchasing the full game.
Demos were once huge for the industry, helping them sell games to people who may have been on the fence, but now, game reviews and footage have become the new norm for determining a game’s worth. Demo discs once contained pre-release videos and trailers for upcoming games, which in a time when YouTube was non-existent, was incredible. It got people excited for the new games they’d beg their parents to buy them. With games shipping in sometimes questionable states of quality, perhaps demos have disappeared due to development costs or out of fear an unpolished demo may steer some away from the finished product. Whatever the reasoning, it’s a shame demos have disappeared from the market.
