A Demo Cuts Sales? I Don't Think So

Before I start, let me tell you about something called D.I.C.E.

This is basically an event where a bunch of gaming bigwigs sit around and discuss that state of the industry as well as other things.  So now with that out of the way, I can tell you about a guy who spoke at DICE 2013 and pissed me off.

http://www.vg247.com/2013/02/11/releasing-a-game-demo-can-cut-your-sales-in-half-warns-schell/

In the above VG24/7 article lies a video of a man called Jesse Schell giving a speech at DICE.  I'm not really pissed off at him in the same way I'm pissed off at someone like Tomm Hulett, but he still rubbed me up the wrong way. 

As part of his speech he talks about the sales figures of games with demos, and games without demos, and he backs it up with a graph too, take a look

So, if you watch the video he explains it, but the four lines are four different types of games.  The bottom line is a game with no demo or trailer.  Next up is a game with a demo only, and a game with a trailer only.  The top line is games that only have a trailer.

Wow, OK, seems pretty solid right?  Well he's pretty vague about what these "types of games" are.  His graph really gives no thought to the quality of said games.  His argument is that the more curious people are, the more likely they are to buy something, which is fine I guess, but it's still complete dog shit.

The guy knows his stuff, I'll give him that, but just because a game has a demo doesn't mean it's going to cut your sale. I'm going to be quite blunt here, and say that there is a lot of shit on the market right now.  I can't move in a games shop for shit games just clogging up the shelf, and THIS is why sales on certain titles are poor.

If your game is ass, and you release a demo, people then know its ass and they won't buy it, but at least you don't piss them off.  If you take away the demo and release a shit game, all you are going to do is anger people and potentially lose sales down the road because they will lose any way of testing your game and may just end up assuming that everything developer X produces is crap after wasting money on the demo less piece of garbage that you first put out.

I remember back when demo discs used to come on the front of fucking magazines and up until this guys speech, I've never even heard the idea that having a demo is going to kill your sales, if anything it would cause the opposite if you ask me, providing that the game is actually good.

Games with demos lose sales because the game is ass, not because of the demo.  If you are seriously suggesting that demos are to blame for poor sales, and the only way to increase sales is to leave gamers in the dark regarding the quality of upcoming titles, you are nothing but a greedy fuck stain hoping to earn a quick buck by shovelling shit into the mouth of consumers.   Still, that's about the state of video games today really, isn't it?