What happened to the good old fashioned demo?

Fmrl

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Saturday evening rant (after hearing about the latest LBP "giveaway" on Fileplanet) - I'm getting a bit cheesed off with all this beta key mullarkey (mostly because I never get sent one!). I hope this trend isn't going to become more widespread.

Now that I've got access to PSN and can download demos easily it's a bit frustrating that some of the games I want to have a try on before I decide whether they would be worth buying or not are restricted. Is this a cynical marketing ploy by the publishers?

And I think it's wrong to call them "beta"s anyway - that implies it's the full game but in a pre-release code version. Seems like what's been banded about at the moment are just restricted license demos.

Fileplanet are actually still giving LBP "free" keys away - but you have to subscribe to one of their services to get it... bit dodgy that.
 
The build of LBP is really old... I expect betas like this are more about testing stress on servers when a big fat bunch of people hit them on release. I do expect there will be a proper demo. Whether it will be in time for release, I don't know, but there will be a demo.

I'd expect to see this more with the serious advent of online consoles and hard drives.
 
with the recent beta's like this, LBP, SOCOM, Resistance 2, they are testing the online servers more than the gameplay. they are looking for people who will upload and download lots of levels in the case of LBP. Therefore they are looking for 'tech savy' people, rather than someone who's not going to explore these options. They are going to find these people by advertising it on the web rather than a psn download.

Also these 'tech savy' people should understand that it is a beta and they may be major bugs / problems with it. Mr & Mrs Smith who got it off the PSN store may not understand that.

I would imagine there will be a demo at a later date. After all Sony are saying it is going to be the biggest game this year :rolleyes:
 

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