Earlier on this evening we picked up on some news reported in an article on industry magazine, MCV’s website. Our report said “Plans are afoot for “premium demos” which are described as “a very long game demo”. Since then remarks like this have spread around the Internet, and have been transformed by the usual game of Internet Chinese Whispers that EA is planning on charging for standard game demos, albeit making them a bit longer to warrant the charge.
This couldn’t be further from the truth as EA have taken some time to explain in more detail their plans for the future, saying that they working on a “number of projects for delivering premium content to consumers before, during, and after the launch of a packaged-goods version of the game.”
They go on to mention that Battlefield 1943 is an ideal model for what EA wants to achieve, in providing a full (but shorter) game experience for $9.99-$14.99 (£6.99-£12.99) and areas for development and feedback can be fed into a later full retail release (presumably titles like Battlefield: Bad Company 2).
There are of course solid business reasons to support this decision in that a well received ‘shorter game’ will act as marketing for the full release. If it’s not well received, EA get a chance to listen to feedback in order to improve the later retail release. So, EA basically get the opportunity to generate some revenues (and hopefully turn a profit at some point) while gamers get a bite-size piece of their favourite franchise, and either get to enjoy themselves for a fair few hours or improve the franchise. Everybody wins then!
