Falling PC Game Demos

These days game developers are releasing PC games but without any demos. You won't get game demos for most of the PC games these days. Most anticipating and high budget PC games often comes without game demos. And some developers are releasing game demos after full game releases.

Right from the beginning of era of PC games, trend of demos have been there. PC games and PC games demos are like brother and sister which comes out from the womb of same mother (developers) and have many things common to them. Almost all the PC games released earlier have their demo versions as well. Developers used to release PC game demos before the game releases actually. All the popular PC games of past have demos.

So what happened to developers now? Why are not they interested in releasing game demos now ? Why users have to buy full version games when they can download game demos for free and can try their hands on the games before they actually buy them ? Isn't releasing game demo a good marketing strategy any more?

First reason might be the piracy. Today whole gaming industry is affected by piracy just as Hollywood and Bollywood are suffering from piracy. Pirated version of the game is present on the Internet before the game releases officially. This is causing big loss to game developers. Recent study has shown that only 4% of the games released have given profit to their developers. So you can judge how adversely piracy is affecting gaming industry. Hence developers and publishers are focussing more on selling games rather than releasing game demos now days.

Second reason might be the big game file size. This is not the period of 2D and 3D games. Now gamers demands more. As a result, developers are creating much big games than ever. From few mega bytes, size of the games have gone in giga bytes. And it is now becoming difficult to get PC game download, so they are being ordered on CD/DVD. If games are so big, their game demos will be no small then. PC game demos are smaller versions of full games but they are not that small that they become easy to download.

Third and final reason for the falling PC game demos may be the presence of console platform which has emerged as a direct competitor of PC for games. Now more quality games are being developed for consoles like Xbox 360, PS3, PSP, Wii etc than for PC. Games comes on console first and then comes on PC. Hardcore gamers can't wait for a delay and hence most hardcore gamers now a days play games on their xbox 360, ps 3, wii etc.

It is not that PC game demos have ceased totally then. PC game demos are coming but popular games often comes without demos. Only those games which are very less known and are very small in size are coming as demos. But what should I say about recently released Tomb Raider Underworld demo and Quantum of Solace demo then? Are these exceptional cases? Yes, may be.

Game demos for xbox, playstation are continously releasing but for PC, their number has fallen significantly. Number is decreasing as the days are passing. If the same trend continue, a day will come when no PC game demo will be available for download, not even of less popular games. It is totally in the hands of the game developers and the publishers whether they wanted to release PC game demos or not. Not releasing game demos will not affect their sales any way and releasing game demos will give gamers another reason to enjoy games. So they should release PC game demos rather than depriving gamers from the demo versions of the PC games.

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