Why aren't there many demos? Major Nelson answers...

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Plainview

I am a sinner.
Sep 11, 2013
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From OXM UK

First it's a major pain in the ass to find the demos. Now, there won't be many demos anyway? Well that sucks!

Microsoft: more Xbox One games will get demos "as the platform goes forward"
It's up to developers to do this, says the Major

Posted on Tuesday 10th Dec 2013 at 11:35 AM UTC By Edwin Evans-Thirlwell, Deputy Editor for OXM

Annoyed by the scarcity of demos for the first Xbox One games? Don't worry, Microsoft hasn't decided to stop supporting them, but it doesn't insist that developers create them, either.

"It is (and always has been) up to game developers to do demos for their own games," Microsoft PR chap Larry Hryb observed in a comment on his blog. "[There'll] be more demos for Xbox One as the platform goes forward."

Microsoft once required Xbox Live Arcade developers to release game trials, but this isn't the case with downloadable titles on Xbox One. "Not all [digital] games will have demos like Xbox Live Arcade games have had on Xbox 360," Xbox Live exec Marc Whitten revealed in September. "That said, we are going to work on lots of ways to make it easy for you to find and try new games on the service."

It's possible all this has something to do with the increasing popularity of free-to-play on console - free-to-play titles are effectively very robust game trials, after all, in which you pay incrementally to unlock the rest of the content. Publishers have long entertained misgivings about the efficacy of traditional demos, which are expensive to produce - releasing a demo may even "cut game sales in half", according to one industry figure.

I had a blog-length think about the implications in March. What's your take? Annoyingly, what few demos there are on Xbox One don't appear on the main storefront - you'll need to search for them using the console's built-in Bing service.

Thanks, NowGamer.​
 
The demos now show up under their own heading in the Games store. Lack of demos is sad for sure, I hope that Microsoft implements some way to try games before we buy. If not for Arcade trials, I wouldn't have bought half the games I did.
 
We used to get trial demos of XBLA titles so we could try the game out before purchase. Did they get rid of this feature? Oh well.
 
If it's up to the devs then I don't think we'll see to many demos because only a few months ago the research into demos found that games that put out demos sold considerably less on average to games that never. I think well start seeing demos come out a couple of months after the games release. I noticed that yhe demos were coming out less frequently on the 360 since that report was published.
 
aceattorney said:
It's easy as saying: Xbox Bing -> downloadable demos
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How about for people who don't have Kinect hooked up or voice enabled? There should be a link in the games tile, weird omission.

And Peggle 2 doesn't seem to have a trial demo. Is this the future of the Xbox Live Arcade feature set?

Xbox One... missing feature after another. Lol
 
Demos are a good idea but last gen I can count only a few times I've downloaded 1 to try it out. MS may have seen a similar trend with most subscribers.
 
i think its a shame that there are not going to be xbla demos as i dont think i would have bought the waking dead if i had not played it first the same with bioshock i had no intention to buy that on release until i played the demo.
 
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I probably played a total of 3 (if that) demos the entire last gen.
 
Noticed a trailer has popped up on the marketplace but yeah demos and trials are needed.

Want to give LocoCycle a try.
 
Wiseguy said:
How about for people who don't have Kinect hooked up or voice enabled? There should be a link in the games tile, weird omission.

And Peggle 2 doesn't seem to have a trial demo. Is this the future of the Xbox Live Arcade feature set?

Xbox One... missing feature after another. Lol
Click to expand...

Yes. You saw what happened on the PS3 when they weren't required. That is where we are this generation. Apparently developers did not like having to put resources and time toward making demos. All it means to me, is I'll wait for impressions and sales. I was so psyched for Crimson Dragon -- played every Panzer Dragoon game to date -- and couldn't wait to try it out. Truthfully, I was pretty dead set on buying it. Unfortunately no demo and poor word of mouth has stayed my hand from purchase. Even with the poor word of mouth, if I had been able to try the demo and enjoyed it, I would have purchased it in a heartbeat. To me this may be great for developers, but lousy for customers in the long run.

And yes once they made Kinect not required they should have had a setup for just the controller. It will come.
 
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Wiseguy said:
How about for people who don't have Kinect hooked up or voice enabled? There should be a link in the games tile, weird omission.

And Peggle 2 doesn't seem to have a trial demo. Is this the future of the Xbox Live Arcade feature set?

Xbox One... missing feature after another. Lol
Click to expand...
If you don't want to use the Kinect for searching for a game demo, you could just type it into the bing search bar underneath the store.
 
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The Wolf King said:
Twisted Pixel are great. Comic Jumper and Gunstringer got mixed scores but I enjoyed them both.
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I remember Comic Jumper getting some seriously scathing reviews, but I honestly loved it. Gunstringer on the other hand was pretty well liked by reviewers though, if memory serves me correctly.
 
Seems like there are demos on Xbox One right now, seems like the console is new, and seems like I am confused about the concern here.
 
I would love a demo for Forza/NFS I want to buy 1 at least but won't until I can try it out.
 
Wiseguy said:
How about for people who don't have Kinect hooked up or voice enabled? There should be a link in the games tile, weird omission.

And Peggle 2 doesn't seem to have a trial demo. Is this the future of the Xbox Live Arcade feature set?

Xbox One... missing feature after another. Lol
Click to expand...


Hook that shiz up and use it right

And honestly its peggle, not much has changed.

But I agree there should be more demos
 
Was a very cool requirement of XBLA to force demos.

But times have changed with Free2Play and other revenue stream models.

Up to the publisher now across all titles, and most are too budget constrained and focused on launch dates.
 
I hope when more demos come out they don't skew to DR3 and NBA Live 14 levels. DR3 is 7gb and NBA Live is 9gb. Download 3-4 of these in a month and there goes 25gb. My ISP is 60gb until fees kick in. lol

On the other hand, FIFA 14 is about 2gb, and smaller scale games like Peggle 2, Zoo Tycoon and KI are about 2-3gb each too I think.
 
Soldier 95B said:
Seems like there are demos on Xbox One right now, seems like the console is new, and seems like I am confused about the concern here.
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Without the mandatory call for them there is little incentive to produce them. They do cost time, money and resources. All one need do is look at how it was on the PS3 last generation to see where this is heading.
 
For those of you confused about demos, the game store section of the dashboard now has a column called Demos or Popular Demos. This definitely wasn't here in the first few weeks. They must have tweaked the store layout.

The demo column matches the pic someone posted a week ago (sorry, I forget who it was), where batch two of X1's had different instruction manual sheets and its dashboard was already tweaked with the demo column.

I guess that update a few days ago did it for the guys who got a batch one console.
 
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