Man, I loves me some Resident Evil. Just think, all of the above and then some can be yours on March 13.
While Japanese gamers have had their mits on the RE5 demo for some time now, we will finally be getting our RE5 demo very soon, and with three playable levels instead of two. Take that, Japanese gamers!
But let’s take a moment to consider the impact this demo will have, and the impact of demos in general. Digitalspy.com is reporting that Xbox 360 owners will get to sink their undead teeth into the demo on Jan. 26, followed by the PS3 demo on PSN a week later on Feb. 2. According to the article, the three levels from the game can be played with an AI buddy, with a real buddy via splitscreen, or over Xbox Live or PSN. That’s a pretty decent chunk of demo to have access to more than a full month prior to the game’s release.
Could Capcom be shooting themselves in the foot here? Could they be cannibalizing their potential game sales by releasing so much of the demo so early?
After all, there have been reports (Eddie touches on it in his hands-on preview) that RE5 plays very similarly to RE4. So say the demo comes out, thousands of people download it over a month’s time and decide that "damn, it’s exactly the same as RE4 but with amazing graphics," and that’s not enough to justify a $60 purchase. Say that people download it and play the crap out of it for a month and decide they’ve had enough, and don’t need to buy the whole game.
But on the other hand, how would fans feel if a demo was never released and the game ended up being less than expected? Kind of a bummer situation I guess. I know that personally I will probably buy RE5 on day one no matter what, but that’s me; I’m a sucker for anything Resident Evil. My collection of anything Resident Evil exceeds all common reason, but not all you guys out there feel the same way.
After reading a thread in our community related to this, I would like to know from those reading, how do demos affect your purchasing decisions? Is an early, longer demo better or worse in your opinion? Is a demo of a popular game expected, and if it is, how much of that game should be revealed in the demo?
I’m going to come out and say that in my opinion, I think a game should absolutely have a demo before it’s release, but a short demo is kind of a bad idea. I’m all for a longer demo about a week before a game’s release. My reasoning here is that I bought Star Wars: The Force Unleashed based on the short demo because I thought it was incredibly fun and showed a lot of potential. Yeah, guess how that turned out for me…
What’s for sure is that Capcom has a big year ahead of them. With RE5, Bionic Commando, Dark Void, and Street Fighter IV all coming out in the first half of the year, it seems they are set to dominate during the normal gaming drought. So Capcom, if you’re reading, bring on the demos!
