Free game demos have existed in one form or another as a promotional method for years. If your game is solid, one of the best ways to market it is to simply let gamers test it out. Still, Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli isn’t a fan of free demos, and believes that they won’t be around forever.
“A free demo is a luxury we have in the game industry that we don t have in other industries such as film,” said Yerli. “Because we’ve had this free luxury for so long, now there are plans to change this people are complaining about it. The reality is that we might not see any free game demos in the long term.”
Yerli seemed unsure if his company’s next big game Crysis 2 will have a demo, saying, “That s something we need to think about, because we haven t fully decided on this yet. But whether we do have a demo or not, do I think companies need to release so many demos I think that we ll see more and more games not carrying a demo in the future, because it becomes prohibitively expensive. Also, given the time pressures in making a demo in fact given the time pressure of making a quality demo I think it all becomes really difficult to work with, and I think we ll see less and less of them in the future.”
Source: Develop
