Windows 7 EA To Charge For Game Demos

kemical

Windows Forum Admin
Staff member
Premium Supporter

Well this will get them a lot of love. Gamasutra reports that Electronic Arts aims to monetize game demos. According to industry analyst Michael Patcher after an EA investor visit, the publisher will start selling 'premium downloadable content' prior to a game's release for $10-$15 that is essentially a longer-than-usual demo.
Patcher said, 'I think that the plan is to release PDLC at $15 that has 3-4 hours of gameplay, so [it has] a very high perceived value, then [EA will] take the feedback from the community (press and players) to tweak the follow-on full game that will be released at a normal packaged price point.' He also made reference to a comment from EA's CEO John Riccitiello that 'the line between packaged product sales and digital revenues would soon begin to blur.'

EA To Charge For Game Demos


In a word 'Unbelieveable'!
 
This is complete and utter madness and is just going to lead ot the pirating of demo's. EA and like will never learn. After reading the article I'm horrified that we will now get to pay for beta content.
 
if the end user gets a rebate off the final purchase then maybe it could work, but not if the just add more to the retail prices, that said if EA expects BETA testing done at the cost of the end user they can take a long hard run of a very short cliff. My view is DEMOs should always be free, adding long demos wont increase sales at all, I knew I hated C&C4 after playing the demo for 5 minutes for example, had I paid to find this out I would have been in talks with a solicitor.

It's simply shocking how GREEDY EA are getting, first they trial in-game adverts and now they trying to make folk pay for unfinished samples!!!! Why not go the whole hog ya big bunch of d**kh**ds and charge for screen shots and backgrounds... jesus it's not like the quality of the games lately have been worth a s**t anyway.

Occurs to me that anyone that doesnt currently pirates games will had even more reason to do so if this goes ahead, after all if you are gonna start looking for pirated DEMOS then it makes no sense to stop there, may as well go the whole hog to the full versions as 3-4 hour demos wont be far off final sizes of the retail (mass effect 2 - which takes a mere 6-8 hour to complete)
 
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I have to agree about EA.. They already have a terrible name amongst gamers and this is just another nail in the coffin. If this practice of paying for demo's would mean that they didn't release half finished games that need patching from day 0ne then perhaps it wouldn't be a bad idea. Although as this hasn't worked even when they've knocked out demo's and beta's I can't really see how this will improve things apart from EA's bank balance.
 
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