A demo is still possible:
A “virtual certainty”? Sure, if you take the word “virtual” to mean “non-existent”. Since we only have one universe (and no “control” to run experiments on), we really don’t know what effect demos have on sales. In direct terms, making a demo costs money to create content which they then give away without receiving any money in return. Sure, that might lead to increased sales of the retail product. But it’s certainly not proven. And how many increased sales is also a relevant factor. The publisher has to guess (and it really is just a guess) how much sales would be increased by a demo, factor that against the cost of creating that demo, and then see if it’s a good return on investment. Maybe they’d rather get the next full game out a month earlier, rather than get an extra 5,000 sales on the current one.[/quote]
It’s just math.
Assume the Demo add x% (2? 3?) to the development cost. As long as it increases sales by greater than x%, it’s profitable to make a demo. Whether you should make a demo or switch the team to other activities gets you into reswitching issues, but I’m pretty sure “103 games released” and “100 games with demos” are equivalent in terms of profitability.
With some odd exceptions, I think it’s pretty much universally profitable to make the demo. Especially for a big single player game like this.
A “virtual certainty”? Sure, if you take the word “virtual” to mean “non-existent”. Since we only have one universe (and no “control” to run experiments on), we really don’t know what effect demos have on sales. In direct terms, making a demo costs money to create content which they then give away without receiving any money in return. Sure, that might lead to increased sales of the retail product. But it’s certainly not proven. And how many increased sales is also a relevant factor. The publisher has to guess (and it really is just a guess) how much sales would be increased by a demo, factor that against the cost of creating that demo, and then see if it’s a good return on investment. Maybe they’d rather get the next full game out a month earlier, rather than get an extra 5,000 sales on the current one.[/quote]
It’s just math.
Assume the Demo add x% (2? 3?) to the development cost. As long as it increases sales by greater than x%, it’s profitable to make a demo. Whether you should make a demo or switch the team to other activities gets you into reswitching issues, but I’m pretty sure “103 games released” and “100 games with demos” are equivalent in terms of profitability.
With some odd exceptions, I think it’s pretty much universally profitable to make the demo. Especially for a big single player game like this.[/quote]
You’re not factoring in possible delays of the retail release of the final game, which can cost a publisher a great deal if their highly anticipated game slips past their next earnings report period. Epic purportedly decided not to do a demo so they could focus all their resources on finishing Unreal 2 and putting it on the shelves.
No, I’m not, but delay costs shouldn’t effect demo profitablility in general. In this specific case, maybe they did, but they didn’t say that, did they?
Actually, you are. There is no such thing as “demo profitability” unless a company is actually selling a demo itself in exchange for profit. A game publisher has 1 (one) profit margin and 1 (one) earnings report, at least as far as its parent company, business partners, and shareholders are concerned. Unless a company can actually gainfully sell a demo in exchange for money, a demo is essentially a cost; a cost in extra time, resources, and team members to create. If you try to release a demo before the retail release of a game, you need to take people who were working on the retail release of a game and pull them off of the main development to carefully optimize an extremely good demo. If they get pulled off development of the main game long enough, that may delay the retail release of the game, which can really hurt the publisher if they were expecting to report initial sales within their specific quarterly earnings report, and the game slips past that date. Can you justify that cost? Yes, if you have enough time and enough development resources to pay your team an extra month or two to get the demo ready, and if the demo does in fact get more people to buy the game (which isn’t something you can tell until after the fact). In this case, Epic decided they couldn’t pay that cost.
I think part of the confusion here is that some people still think that a demo is a slapdash affair that can be put together quickly and easily. As you all know, a demo is intended to give people an idea of what the final game is like before they buy it. That’s why so many game companies, especially Epic (who delayed the UT 2003 demo for weeks, and got slammed by their fans as a result) put so much time and effort into making demos. They’re not trivial.
“You’re not factoring in possible delays of the retail release of the final game, which can cost a publisher a great deal if their highly anticipated game slips past their next earnings report period.”
They obviously didn’t seem to concerned about “slipping dates” when they purposely delayed Unreal 2 because they didn’t want it and UT2K3 to come out so close together. Unreal 2 could have been released months ago if they had wanted it too.
A demo is not a cost; it’s an investment, the same as advertising.
Actually, you can’t tell even after the fact. Demos certainly are a form of advertising, but it’s incredibly difficult to measure the effects of any given “ad”, at least in an industry like ours.
True. So what? What’s your advertising budget for the product? Is it enough to cover the costs of making the demo? Just in terms of employee salaries, that demo probably costs in the low five figures. How many page-months of full-color ads can you get for that amount? How much do you think a demo will increase sales? How much do you think ads will increase sales? (And remember, you don’t have any reason to be confident about either of those numbers.)
I’m not saying “making demos is always a lose”. But I am saying that it’s not always an obvious win.
I just played the new Black Hawk Down demo. I was on the fence about this game, as I didn’t care for the previous Novalogic FPS games. After playing the SP and MP demo levels, it has moved to my “must buy” list. Well done, bring on the full game.
Aaaaand unsurprisingly, there’s no demo because it’d probably by a full 10-20% of the game. :D