For that data to be even remotely useful, they need to look at how long time do people spend playing the game, and customer satisfaction. I do not doubt that proper demos make people buy less games, but on the other hand you have less disgruntled customers because they didn't spend 60€ on a game that isn't very good.
I seriously cannot understand why any console maker doesn't go all out and focus on the customer. Tell publishers to either make a reasonable demo, or accept that people buy the game and can get a refund if they've played it less than an hour.
>I seriously cannot understand why any console maker doesn't go all out and focus on the customer. Tell publishers to either make a reasonable demo,
Ouya used to require every game to have a demo or to be free-to-play. They ditched it[1]. I believe MS still has the mandatory demo on Xbox live arcade (digital only games) but only for the 360 titles, they allow publishers to decide for the XB1 [2]. I cannot possibly know their reasons but my guess is that demos are expensive to make. Giving a refund has not been tried as far as I know but Sony had something similar with one hour limited full games for free. I believe they stopped releasing these few years ago. Again, I don't know their reasons but my guess is that it was not driving a significant number of additional sales.
Right now you can Share Play on the PS4 and watch game streams everywhere so the utility of demos is even less than in the 7th generation consoles.
It is kind of maddening, considering that consoles now know all of this metadata about your usage. Digital purchases should have a number of improvements over a physical purchase, but that hasn't really happened and perhaps it never will.
It doesn't seem that unreasonable to expect:
- Reduced cost, since there is one fewer middleman, no breakage or unsold inventory and no shipping (although it must be said that the costs to serve game downloads is not really that much cheaper than storefronts)
- Trial periods or return windows, as hvidgaard mentioned
- Resale and gifting
These all seem like missed opportunities to me. Developers bemoan the used game market, because it means that a game which 10 million people played only pays them for 2 million copies. Oh, and they have to provide support and services to all 10 million people or reap the whirlwind.
Rather than try to get sales to 10 million units (which will never happen for various reasons), how about 4 million? I guess there will always be someone saying "well, if we just didn't allow digital sales to have return windows..."
I seriously cannot understand why any console maker doesn't go all out and focus on the customer. Tell publishers to either make a reasonable demo, or accept that people buy the game and can get a refund if they've played it less than an hour.