The Force Unleashed demo breaks XBLM download record

by Jason Dobson on Sep 10th 2008 8:30PM

It's not just stormtroopers and trees that have been splintered by Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, but download records as well. LucasArts announced that the game's Xbox Live demo has force choked download records for the service, surpassing a million downloads in just eight days following its August debut -- a feat one day better than the previous record according to the company.

Boasting further, LucasArts adds that together with the game's PSN demo, The Force Unleashed appetizer has been downloaded more than 2.3 million times worldwide. Most impressive, though we wonder how many people gave up their place in line camped out waiting for the game's September 16 release in order to actually try it out.

[Via press release]

Tags: demo, lucasarts, star-wars, starwars, the-force-unleashed, theforceunleashed, Xbox-360, xbox-live, xboxlive

Reader Comments (93)

It's sure missing the fun part.

I thought it was fun, but lacked any sort of depth. Possibly a buy at $25 or less.

I'm glad that you managed to glean that from a page of reviews.

I am also glad that all of these people made me not want to play a game I didn't even know came out today.

Love the internet.

And all of you that spent time DLing the demo. Back to spore....

Anybody else care to chime in with their feedback? Honestly this is the last game that's keeping me from Ebaying my Wii, and the reviews are coming in kinda weak so I may expedite that.

Don't ebay your Wii. You know that the moment you do a bunch of games you want will be announced for it. ;)

Well it sucks on the real systems, and the law of wii ports says that a wii version is always weaker than the other two....

You know what? Just ebay it.

The game is just plain awful. This is coming from an admitted Star Wars fanboy ... As Tmac said by universal law the Wii version of multiplatform games will always at least 5-10X worse than the adult consoles.

If you want to kick ass and take names as the dark apprentice your only option is the incredible Soul Calibur 4 ...

QTEs make this game suck. I may as well read a goddamn choose-your-own-adventure book.

I dunno. The Wii version has the whole "tactile" thing going for it, which might save the boredom of it all

But that's my opinion. Those who take no joy in motion controls (well-implemented) would take no more joy in the Wii version than in others

But if Force Unleashed is what you hinge your Wii's future on, and not such truly unique fare such as MadWorld or Disaster, you probably should just eBay it.

I wasn't impressed, but i felt that way before i played the demo from what had already seen. That whole physics whatever they hyped up never seems to come into play since all the action takes place so far from where the camera is. It feels too much like a God of War rip. Not that God of War is bad, but things could've been done better to make it feel like star wars. Even the player animations look identical.

It also looks like it suffers from button combinations, too, a feature that i feel is a poor substitution for control and also overused in console gaming.

With regards to star wars, i miss the mid 90's when they would use live action actors for cutscenes. Jedi Knight was awesome, even though they weren't the best actors, it still gave the game a genuine star wars feel. Now, they give lifeless scripts to lifeless characters and it seems like it always ends up being done so poorly. Maybe i've just been spoiled by games like Metal Gear and others that go through a lot of effort to get the voice acting done properly.

Wow, not a lot of happy people in here.

I'll go against the grain, I loved the demo and thought it was a friggin' blast.

Me too.
I don't get the hate.

At first I thought it was meh. I then went back and actually learned how to play and utilize the force grab/lighting/throw combo and the game opened up in a new light.
I could play the hardest difficulty and hardly use the saber until the at-st battle.

I enjoyed the demo too. Hell, I'll probably be picking up the game.

most of the unhappy people are douchebags who havent even played the full game, think minor technical flaws give the game 7s and 8s, and that those scores are unplayable

Me too dude, I play the demo just about every night. Still a day 1 purchase.

Well I'll throw my hat in the minority camp once again. I thoroughly enjoyed the demo. As with any game, if you give it time and figure out the controls, it is a blast to play. Day one purchase here as well.

I enjoyed it wholeheartedly. I played the demo through a number of times. 90% of the complaints I've seen are "no multiplayer" and "non-branching storyline". I look at it as an interactive star wars novel. And if the book version of the game being #1 on the new york times bestseller list is any indication, it's got a great story.

The other 10% are people that didn't spend enough time figuring out the controls.

The demo for this game was mediocre at best, and i was SORELY disappointing. I will not be buying this game.

You sure are SORELY disappointing!

i like how the worst games have the most demo downloads

I think that its usually games with a lot of hype, but still remain unknown quantities. Everyone is interested but skeptical and want to get some hands on.

unfortunately this one backfire on them. I fear there will be a day when developers figure out that demos dont help their sales and stop doing them.

I kept trying to crush the walker at the end, like doode does in the trailer.

...sigh

More PS3 owners downloaded this than 360 owners?

i was wondering about that too. *shrugs* probably best not to turn this into a PS3 vs. 360 thing though.

It's because PS3 owners don't have any other games to play!

And 1 mil < 1.3 mil?

There were 1 million downloads from XBL in 8 days. The other 1.3 million came from PSN *and* additional XBL downloads after the initial 8 day rush.

Is that a question or a comment?

Where would you get that from anyway?

I really liked it :) I'm getting the 360 version, because my other system (DS) has got an awful, awful version of it.

So when 's the PC version?

Cos face it all that aiming stuff you're talking about needs a mouse.

I was really looking forward to this game until the recent video I saw. Some weird creature with a shield he couldn't cut through with a LIGHTSABRE. And some plants shooting stuff. Didn't like all that selective outline stuff either. Jedi Knight 2 (with patches) and Jedi Academy did it right.

I do think the technology behind this is very good though. Shame.

PC version would rule, maybe they're waiting to make it even better.

Raven did a hell of a job on the lightsaber gameplay in JK2. I doubt this game will come to PC. They're released a version on every game system possible (PS3, 360, Wii, PS2, DS, PSP) and no mention of a PC version. If it ever did come out, it'd probably be a quick and dirty port.

Search through the Joystiq archives... I'm pretty sure Lucasarts very clearly stated there will NOT be a PC version. :(

What Dark said, Lucas Arts have said that they won't make a PC version because not all PC's are top end gaming machines, or some shit, and that they didn't want to water the experience down for anyone.

HELLO FUCKING DS VERSION.

but but but....which one ISNT the watered down version :(

@Ihavepants

Odd... you're probably right but that's what MINIMUM SPEC means.
They must have realised they couldn't do what they wanted on lower machines (how low?) and thought the bad publicity from it jugging would be damaging.

Well hey not to worry YOU [Lucas] got that anyway.

That and the PC version would be best with ALL the MODS...ah perhaps we've hit the nail on the head.

People making better games than you, with your newfangled engine and tech.

I had fun with the demo until I had to fight the walker. It kind of fell apart after that point.

Its definitely the most fun I have had using the force. The action makes it seem like my dude is (as I said earlier) tearing sh*t up in the level. I don't know if the powers can carry an entire game though.

With a lot of, in my opinion, better games coming out soon, Force Unleashed is definitely not going to make my play list for a while.

well that's not good...I mean anyone who has tried the demo agrees that this is a pretty average game. so if 2 million people have downloaded the demo, then that's 2 million people who won't buy the game.

It was if As if a million souls cried out and went... "meh!"

Damnit LucasArts why can't you release another Tie Figher game already!? That's all I want, please!!

i spent the first 10 minutes in the first room just jumping repeatedly.

i couldnt get over the way he jumps; he must use the force to alter gravity.

jedi knight rapes this game.

The aiming took me some getting used to, but it's fine once you figure it out, the targeting system has apparantly been improved for the final version anyway.

I found the game to be pretty fun, the major problem for me was the QTE events, all boss battles use these, which take half the fun away from the game.. The story looks great, but again, it seems like it's going to be a very short game. I still really want to play it, but I'm going to wait for a price drop before bothering.

This is a solid rent for me. I think that the story will be well worth a play through. Bridging the series interests me.

A rental at best.
http://croutondays.d3p0.com/star-wars-ambitions/

Now I'm curious. If the XBLM had over a million downloads, and the total number of downloads including PSN was 2.3 million, then does that mean PSN had something close to 1.2 or 1.3 million downloads? Or is there some other source accounting for the downloads?

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The Force Unleashed demo breaks XBLM download record

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