Not long now to Dragon Age II, and the demo has just been released with the prospect of a shiny bauble: “Finishing the demo unlocks a new weapon in the main game”. Seems a bit odd, I always thought the main purpose of a demo was to have a look at a game if you weren’t sure if you might like it, whereas that looks like an incentive to diehard players, who probably already have the full game pre-ordered, to go and play the demo too. And badger their friends into downloading it as well, as “If there are 1 million or more demo downloads on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 combined, two more in-game items will be released.”
Personally, I only got the demo so I could ensure my computer could handle the game (Which it can-ish).
Good point, well worth a go if your spec’s a bit borderline.
Interesting move. Also interesting to see a big budget game that bothers to produce a demo. Isn’t it only a short while ago that we were told that the big boys would rather spend their money on marketing hype than on producing demos?
I guess that’s why there’s all the hoopla about the million downloads and everything, either marketing have co-opted the demo for hype purposes, or the devs have co-opted the marketing budget to get a demo out there, or maybe a bit of both!
Maybe there’s a compare and contrast somewhere with single player game demos and MMO betas, and their marketing uses…