Feinder
Posts: 6589
Joined: 9/4/2002 From: Land o' Lakes, FL Status: offline
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I'd actually agree that a demo could be a good thing, under the right circumstances. The demo could be just the Coral Sea scenario. There's plenty of crap in that for the player to see what the game is about. He can still be wow'd by the detail and complexity (even tho he really is only seeing the tip of the iceberg). He'd also see the rest of them map, and go, "You mean I get stuff all the way over here in Karchi!". Coral Sea would make an excellent demo. That being said, this is the part where "under the right circumstances" bites you in the ass. WitP isn't marketed to the masses. Most of the sales of this game are by us, the clowns who were waiting to buy it in the first place (and then rammed it down the throats of a friend to buy it too). I noticed (somewhat disappointedly), that Matrix did -not- include WitP in it's full page ad for Korson Pocket and WaW in "WW2 History" magazine this month. But space is money, I realize Matrix is trying to push those two titles because they -do- appeal to the wider audience. So the round-about comment is that, "What good does it do you to put out a demo, when most people aren't going to see it anyways?" You're going to sell a $10 demo on the website? Why bother. How many lost sales are there? Saying "Me and all my friends want to buy this game" isn't really -that- many people. It's one of the classic "what do we do" about retail. It's hard to know how many people didn't buy your product, but wanted to (that's another VERY long discussion, but I'll skip that). I suppose you -could- put a free Coral Sea demo on the site, that really doesn't cost you anything but bandwidth. Personally, I'd stamp all the World at War adn Korson Pocket CDs with the Coral Sea scenario included. The masses will be more inclined to buy WaW anyways, so give 'em a free taste of WitP. If they say, "I gotta put that on Chirstmas list!" then you've sold two titles, not just one. But WitP is -not- a product for the masses. A fee demo is. It costs money to make. It costs money to distribute. Yes, it would pull in some sales, but you've to weigh how many sales you're actually going get out of it. As pointed out earlier, wargames that are attracted to WitP tend to be willing to spend the money on it, whether they have the money or not. They don't make as many purchases as general population computer gamers. The make a few purchase, and make them count. H_ll, some of you knuckleheads are still running on P2 machines, with barely enough ram to make the cursor blink (which artfully illustrates my point). Again, yes some would buy the game if a demo was available, but the real issue is the cost of distributing the demo, not the question of it's availablity. -F-
< Message edited by Feinder -- 2/3/2005 4:38:21 PM >
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