Remember when games used to have free demos that you can play via demo disk or download?

[Chicano3000X 77]

I remember going to the store as a kid and getting the Official Playstation Magazine and taking it home to play the demo disk(disclaimer, I know the disk itself isn't free).

 

Or on PC, where I'd find demos on sites like gamerevolution and just play various games.

 

The most recent is when I got my XBox 360. That was the last time I've seen demos being available.

 

What happened to the idea of releasing demos for games? 

[Ike★ 2,922]

They’re still there. Just digital. For example, RE8 had a few demos and Tales of Arise has one launching tomorrow. 
 

Although, the new trend does seem to be early access where you pay the cost of the game upfront and get to mess around with it before final release. 

[Mr. House 3,371]

I don't care much for demos these days. Enough media to go around before deciding on buying a game.

 

I really liked Official Playstation Magazine back during the PS1 and early PS2 era though. Info was hard to come by back then so being able to play a multitude of demos each month was awesome. 

[Casual 743]

15 minutes ago, Ramza said:

I don't care much for demos these days. Enough media to go around before deciding on buying a game.

 

 

Yeah. It's a lot easier to make decisions on games these days. I mostly end up only getting demos for games I've already decided to buy.

 

Back in the day it was dope though.

Edited August 17, 2021 by Casual

[Hot Sauce 2,742]

Adults don't care because they have more money than time and kids don't care because free-to-play games fill that 'more free time than money' void.

[kaz 2,445]

I think there are more demos than ever, but like Ike said they are digital. And yea, don't waste my time with demos. 

[-GD-X★ 7,814]

i think it's a nostalgia thing. i used to love playing demos from magazines like official dreamcast mag, oxm, and opm. now, i rarely play them. 

[Remij 4,717]

Demos simply had more value back then.  When you bought a game, you were really committing to it in those days.. and without a game magazine to read to give you some idea of what you were getting you really didn't know..  You had to go out and buy it because most everything was still physical at that time.  It was your only real ability to try the game before you made the decision.  You also weren't easily able to return games like you can now.  It also added value to game magazines... so they really made a lot of sense.

 

As time went on and the internet became more integrated into games... we could get our news about games there, the more marketable games became.. and thus publishers learned new ways of selling us games before we could get our hands on them.. and eventually the demo really only existed not as a tool for the user/gamer... but the corporations to test their games and gather feedback.  So demos became more like betas.

 

There's just not as much use for them anymore.  Buy a game, don't like it?  Return it before you play 2h worth..  No biggie.  I don't have to leave my house to buy any new games..   There are still the odd publishers/developers out there who throw them out to gather feedback and market the game.. but it's not anything like how it was.

 

I miss those old days so much.  Getting Playstation Underground demo discs, and PC game demo discs in magazines... fuck that was cool shit  

[The Mother Fucker 26]

Yep, PlayStation Magazine demos were the stuff.

 

and so was the PlayStation Underground Demos, and plus PlayStation Interactive sampler CD that would be packed in with the original console.

 

This was how I was welcomed to PlayStation after leaving the SEGA Genesis and Atari Jaguar behind back in the day.

 

 

[Cooke 2,041]

I played the fuck out of the Warcraft 2 demo lol

[-GD-X★ 7,814]

i played the fuck out of the splinter cell and zone of enders 2 demos. 

[Casual 743]

 

55 minutes ago, Cooke said:

I played the fuck out of the Warcraft 2 demo lol

man i played a tonnnn of the diablo ii demo back in the day.

 

i also remember renting the promotional banjo kazooie vhs from blockbuster back in the day, good times.

[Cooke 2,041]

8 minutes ago, Casual said:

 

man i played a tonnnn of the diablo ii demo back in the day.

 

i also remember renting the promotional banjo kazooie vhs from blockbuster back in the day, good times.

I played the OD Diablo demo. I think it gave you the first 9 levels or something. 

[MalaXmaS 651]

7 hours ago, Chicano3000X said:

I remember going to the store as a kid and getting the Official Playstation Magazine and taking it home to play the demo disk(disclaimer, I know the disk itself isn't free).

 

Or on PC, where I'd find demos on sites like gamerevolution and just play various games.

 

The most recent is when I got my XBox 360. That was the last time I've seen demos being available.

 

What happened to the idea of releasing demos for games? 

I think this is not an issue with game demos being on physical media but rather them existing at all. 

Some game companies are lazy af, and they'd rather not give you anything at all or give you a free trial that consists of giving you the whole fucking game for you to play for an entire weekend.

[kaz 2,445]

I played the fuck out of my life demo and I wanted to quit before release  

[-GD-X★ 7,814]

9 hours ago, kaz said:

I played the fuck out of my life demo and I wanted to quit before release  

/thread. winner.