Mon, Feb 11, 2013 | 21:59 GMT
Releasing a game demo can cut your sales in half, warns Schell
Schell games CEO and industry analyst Jesse Schell has warned that releasing a demo of your game before launch can kill your sales. Schell argues his case against releasing a demo at DICE Summit 2013 last week, and he had the stats to back up his claim too.
Above: EA recently confirmed that the Dead Space 3 demo was downloaded over 2 million times.
PCGamesN reports that Schell stated, “You mean we spent all this money making a demo and getting it out there, and it cut our sales in half? Yes, that’s exactly what happened to you.”
He cautioned developers that without a demo to test, gamers will have to buy a game in order to see if it’s any good or not, while demo downloads will often deter players from picking up the full release, rather than encouraging a purchase.
Schell also explained that the games selling most were those that built up expectations by not releasing a demo, while teaser trailers and other marketing ploys worked more effectively than a demo to raise interest in titles.
Here’s Schells presentation in full. PCGamesN points out that he makes the above points around the ten-minute mark.
What do you think? Would you be sad to see demo downloads disappear? Have they ever put you off buying a game? Let us know below.
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Posted in: DICE Summit 2013, PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Tags: Jesse Schell
59 comments
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#51
BraveArse
11/02/13, 8:12 pm
Aside from the tacit admission that devs “sometimes” release dodgy games, and you shouldn’t let them know this before release ( fairly apt given the current A:CM review embargo ), this is all kinds of nonsense.
Unless he has access to alternate universes where games got released with and without a demo, then there is absolutely no way he can make this statement. Your actual sales are your actual sales, you can’t say you’re sales have been cut in half like that, it defies all logic. You can say that you got your forecast badly wrong though, how about doing that Schell? Classic corporate sociopath.
#52
orakaa
11/02/13, 8:17 pm
@47: I agree. As said in my comment, when I tried Borderlands and liked it, after the first hour, I was just one click away from paying it. It works and it’s good (actually, I wish you could do that on all games, especially the ones which don’t have a demo: Borderlands was one of those).
So I do see the advantage of this, it’s just that having to download a 20 Go “demo/trial” is not very convenient, especially when you have a limited bandwidth (even with 1 or 2 Go demos, it’s quite a slow and long process).
#53
Cobra951
11/02/13, 8:24 pm
@52: I don’t know about the PS3, but the Xbox allows silent background downloads. I’ve downloaded full games while playing others. You can also set it up so that when you turn off your system, enough of it stays on until pending downloads complete, then it powers off the rest of the way. (It’s not this way by default. You need to go into the system setup and allow it to do this.)
#54
Clupula
11/02/13, 8:37 pm
@53 – PS3 allows background downloads too. And you can set it so that it turns off automatically after installing whatever you were downloading.
#55
Clupula
11/02/13, 8:38 pm
I know I never bought Deus Ex because there was no demo for it. It looked interesting, but not interesting enough to buy it without playing it.
#56
fearmonkey
11/02/13, 9:08 pm
It is a two-edged sword. If you have a great game, release a demo that shows its strengths. If the game isnt great, you are a better off not releasing a demo, or release a demo that is essentially the best parts of the game.
It’s like the shareware system of old, you got a large amount of gameplay for free and if you liked it, you would buy the rest of the game. That system worked great, but people forgot its lessons. You dont have to release a large part of the game for free, but what you do release has to be awesome!
I bought Kingdoms of Amalur after playing the demo, I bought dragons dogma after playing the demo, but I didnt buy a ton of other titles that had terrible demos. If you release a demo, it has to be awesome or dont bother.
#57
robmlufc
11/02/13, 9:44 pm
It almost encourages piracy.
Download a game for free, if its any good then buy the full version so you dont have to cock about with patches and multiplayer stuff. If its crap then no loss.
#58
Vice
12/02/13, 7:11 am
This is an absolutely fucking disgusting behavior. We made a shit game WOPS we still want your money though, so buy it kk?
@57 — that’s what I’m doing for years now and suggest to do to anyone I know.
#59
Joe_Gamer
13/02/13, 3:21 am
I think we are focusing on the wrong part of his speech, of course I game mostly on PC where every game has a “demo” which is a large part of the reason I choose to invest in the PC platform, no more will I get suckered by marketing BS, before I put down my money I have almost always already played the game and judged it worthy. That’s not really the point I was wanting to make though. What really caught my attention in his speach was the “Keys to Utopia”
Magical interfaces
Fair Payment
Less A more I
Family and friends
Transformation
That sure sounds a hell of a lot better to me than nuetering used games and monetizing every god damn fucking tiny little bit of EVERYTHING with canabalizing DLC and micro-transactions.
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