Electronic Arts have announced they are to look at ‘Premium Demos’ which will be longer than current demos and more akin to shorter games which can be more experimental. The plan is to give a similar experience to full retail releases and feed that back into development of larger games. EA have clarified their position by drawing comparison to the Battlefield 1943 PSN/XBLA title which presumably feeds back data from gamers into the development process for Battlefield Bad Company 2 or even Medal of Honor. Do you think this model is interesting?
Would you prefer the solution that Sony patented recently of ‘degradable’ demos, in which you would start with a copy of the full game and then over time features would be removed until you are left with a simple demo. You can then pay for an unlock key and have access to the whole game once more.
Perhaps you are quite happy with the small demos that we have already on the PS3 and XBox networks? Let’s help those marketing chaps over at EA with some handy research, perhaps they will listen to us – get clicking people!