Crytek boss: free game demos 'prohibitively expensive'

Your joking right? Please tell me you are because I will not pay for a demo, EVER. The whole point of a demo is to show to a potential customer what the game is like and what it is about. And I know a lot of people who have downloaded a demo liked the game and then bought it, without the demo they wouln't have got the game.

So this bull of paying for a demo won't work, thats just my opinion though.

The only way this would work is after you bought the demo it gave you a voucher code for whatever the demo costs off the game

But since I'm going to pay for a demo, I want a demo of that demo that I can try for free.

BTW this should be a slap in the face to all the wagon-riders, loving EA after the activision / infinity ward split. FACT: they are both major organizations, and the quarterly results matter way WAY more than any gamer or group of gamers.

Not really a slap in the face..

i mean, i didn't get a demo for mass effect, battlefield 2 (beta, but i pre-ordered anyways), or mirrors edge.

as i recall, i loved all of those games, and they were extremely good.

I don't think going from not playing a demo, to not paying for a demo is going to affect most people.

Brian I'm merely referring to the business practice itself. Not the practicality or effectiveness of demos.
To me E.A. claiming that demos are too expensive and that they need to charge for them now is laughable. Don't XBLA players already pay for them? (as stated below).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't demos serve as a way for developers to improve their game and learn about bugs and glitches that internal testing misses?

Example:
So heres a demo of Battlefield Bad Company 3 ... its 5.99 and you get TWO levels instead of the one for BBC2's demo. Now pay the 69 99 for the game once its done... OH and there's some free and paid DLC coming post launch too .. woohoo...

Maybe you're not the type to try out games before they come out, but many ppl do.

@amart
Live users "have to pay" for them the same way that PSN users have to.
Geting demos / beta access first by buying:
"Qore" (yay paid demos FTL!)
and newly premiered "FirstPlay" (the same old crap, new name)...

Of course you can wait....

nah, don't get me wrong, if a demo is available for a game, ill def try it before spending 50 dollars.

but it isn't a make or break factor in most cases, i'll simply visit some forums where people play similar games as me.

if the resounding response is that the game is bad, ill stay away, if the majority like it, ill buy it if interested.

but yea, paying for demos is stupid, it's just too bad that thousands of people would buy it anyways.

lol didn't know about core, that sucks.

Given that millions of people bought GT5 Prologue, which had a microscopic fraction of the full game, yet is only half the price of a full game, it was only a matter of time before everyone else started doing this.

why we are getting mad? this is logical, it was the next step after charging us for DLC garbage like a virtual gun that was locked in the disk since the beginning and an epilogue that should be in the game since i bought it. This is the result, we accepted DLC people paid for it instead of giving the finger, so it´s very logical that the next step is to charge you for a demo which is something "very costly" suuuuuuuure, there have been demos of games for YEAAARRSSS and this is the first time that i heard something so stupid that the only reason to say it is because they know people will buy it, next step??? charging for an extra life?? next thing people will be charged every single time that they want to play, remember the good old arcades? well, be happy they are coming back, in our living room.............

Paying $4.99 for a demo is like paying $4.99 for the little meat samples at your grocery store.

Are you crazy ? Seriously you would pay $4.99 for a freaking demo ? You can rent the full game for that sort of money and play it for 3 days enough time to clock most games and return it back..

EA must have had enough of Kodick having the dick hat, Looks like they want to wear it again..

@Vince

I completely agree with you. When I bought my PS3 I didn't know anything about Uncharted, when the demo was released I downloaded it played a lot of it and then I decided to buy it.

So yeah a demo is a pretty big deal and for me it has helped me to decide whether to buy a good game or not.

I wouldn't mind paying 1 dollar. Think about it, a million downloads is a million dollars, which should be more than enough money to put out a demo.

Demo's = Advertisement/Promotion

You don't get paid to advertise.
You spend money to advertise.
EA has their thinking backwards.

crytek.com/contact/


Send your complaints.

Hey guys! Did you hear? Now we have to pay money to see advertisements! I'm so psyched to pay money towards finding out what others tell me I should buy.

I hear Kick-Ass is a good movie. I should really pay the money so I can preview the trailer before I pay money for my theater tickets.

"Live users "have to pay" for them the same way that PSN users have to.
Geting demos / beta access first by buying:
"Qore" (yay paid demos FTL!)"

False. Qore is only for a few demos.

@Vince
"Your joking right? Please tell me you are because I will not pay for a demo, EVER."

If you RTFA (Read The ____ Article), you'd notice that the cost of developing the demo is built into the cost of the final product. When you go and play $69.99 for a new title, a few dollars of the purchase price such as say $4.99 is spent on making the demo. If there was no demo made or demo's given at a cost of $4.99, the game would only be $65.00.

So those people who know they are going to buy it anyway (Ie Halo: Reach, Heavy Rain, etc) can buy the game for $5.00 cheaper while those ppl who want to see a Heavy Rain demo can pay the $4.99 to test it and then the $64.99 to buy it. In the end, the gamer hasn't spent anymore than he would have normally to demo it but the game who didn't demo it saved five bucks.

I pretty rarely play demos so I'd be in favour of those who play demos, paying for the development cost of those demos rather than myself footing the bill through higher costs of games :P. Several years ago, a demo of a game might have used 50MB of bandwidth so a million downlodas wasn't that much data. Compare that to a demo thats 1.7GB and you've got a completely different story.

I have no problems getting what I pay for, and I have a problem with paying for more than what I use.

If I only have enough interest in the game to pay for 25% of the content, I should have the option to spend that much of the full price. As long as the full game has the same amount of money discounted from it, should I want to buy the rest.

Two games I would love this option on are Skate 3 and MXvsATV Reflex. Give me %25 of the levels and soundtrack and I'll gladly spend $15. But I'm not into them enough to buy the whole thing for $60.

Much like how they chopped Fable 3 up into multiple segments that you could buy one at a time and still only spend up to retail price.

wes - you're insane if you think they're going to lower the price of games because people start paying for demos. never going to happen.

this is a 'test' article meant to gauge how we react - how many people are willing to bend over vs how many people freak out.

i've bought a ton of games i never thought i'd be interested in thanks to demos. charging for them is a huge mistake. anyone who actually buys them is making an even bigger mistake, since they're telling the industry it's ok to do. let this fail miserably and they'll go back to free demos soon enough.

Ok ok shit! Just voicing my opinion. That price was AUS dollars too, so like US$2.50 or less. That sound better? Shouldn't have bought my opinions here -_-

@Foetoid

4.99 AU is 4.65 USD.

On behalf of everyone here, I'd like you to welcome you to 2006-2007 from your days in the 90's

@CzAr
Just sent this to them...

Dear Crytek, I've recently read Cevet Yerli's comments stating that demos are a luxury, prohibitively expensive, and in the future may cease to exist or cost money for the consumer. I think this is ridiculous, I consider demos marketing, and while entertaining, not entertainment. By playing a demo, I have decided to inspect a small portion of your game and decide if it fits my tastes, needs and expectations. In my eyes releasing a demo shows faith in the product, yes it may be costly, and yes not everyone who plays it will buy the final product, but by releasing a demo you are saying "Here is our latest project, we're very proud of it, and we are confident that if you take a few moments out of your day to download it and give it a try, you will buy the finished product". See consumers already pay for demos, with their time. Just as I don't watch every movie trailer that is released, I don't play every demo, but when I do, the developer should be thankful that I'm giving their product a trial run. By deciding to make games professionally, that is to say, for our money, you have adopted the risk that you will not make any money. Yes from your perspective it is beneficial to reduce or eliminate risks. But there will always be risks, if you choose not to except that, don't make games. I loved Crysis, I purchased it shortly after it was released. But before I purchased it, after reports that although an excellent game, it was system intensive , I downloaded the demo to make sure it would run on my system. I'm very excited for Crysis 2, but before I spend a large part of my entertainment budget, I would like to try a demo of it. Without a free demo you run the risk of myself and the community either 1) Pirating your game, or what I believe is worse 2) Never playing(read: buying) it. You run a business, and are constantly competing for both my time and money. My dollar is not your right, never forget that. Thank you for your time and I look forward to your response.- David

Oh dear Morisato, you fail so much!. You might not be from Aus so this is how it works. Regardless of the currency conversion, we pay double. A brand new Wii game in the US is $49.99. In Aus its $99.95. For example our Wii consoles and 360 Pro consoles are AUS$399. If i bought Bioshock 2 retail right now, it would be $119.95, since its double the US price of $59.95. Of course some retailers chop $10 or $20 off the price to be competitive, i'm just judging the normal retail price. So obviously a $4.99 game in Aus is about $2.50 in the US. We've always paid excessively more because it costs publishers a lot more to distribute to a far-off country like ours to a relatively small gaming population. Even our steam games, which were in straight USD (and therefore much cheaper than retail) have started raising in price closer to retail so they can milk more money from us. So before you start getting all smug hows about you grow up and do some research.

Demos are the single best thing to happen this console generation cycle. I know I'm not the only person whose been burned before by a sucky game hiding amongst the good games. Demos help me separate the wheat from the chaff.

What a stupid f**king move. Paying for a demo instantly makes it NOT a "demo". It was bad enough that some games were forcing people to pre-purchase the game in order to access the demo online (once again negating the purpose of a demo)... but to charge people FOR the demo!!!

The sad part is, there are tons of sheep here that will gladly pay for a demo, simply because they can't resist. Which ruins it for us sane ones.

I guess the only "demos" in the future will be available way after game releases, in the form of steam free weekends.

So now i'll have to pirate the demos? (sarcasm)

But doesn't Microsoft in a sneaky way, charge for demos via XBL gold subscriptions, exclusive game or not your still paying for a demo.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

wow you're right! Never thought of that, I will say; the differences between PSN and XBLA are almost non-existent nowadays. I mean having played around with it quite a bit ( and being a 360 owner ) Ive began to have trouble justifying XBL's pricetag.

Fire Ant,

The only problem with that concept is that Silver members also get acess to the same demos, they just have to wait a week, which was fine by me (was a silver member for the past year or so). So no, gold subscriptions aren't subsidizing demo costs, gold subscriptions just supply earlier access - don't know if you can put a dollar figure on that.

On topic, I don't really understand all the work that's involved. For demos made from the ground up for PSN/XBLA I get it, but aren't most demos just repurposed builds from previous media showings/screenings, etc? What extra huge cost is involved in that?

@embassy
But that's my point your still paying for a demo (one week advantage or not) that's what they tell you to justify the cost.

@FireAnt360
Actualy you pay for multiplayer access not demos.
Or as I stated in comments above - you pay for demos/betas in PSN too:
in Qore and FirstPlay you 'pay for early access'.
And of course like in Live no matter that you pay you still have to watch ads.
Effing joke...

Wait, you mean I haven't been pirating from Baskin Robins for all these years?

"Live users "have to pay" for them the same way that PSN users have to.
Geting demos / beta access first by buying:
"Qore" (yay paid demos FTL!)"

False. Qore is only for a few demos.

@Extinction

That maybe true. But, XBL has a demo for every single arcade and indie game (A feature that made me buy many games).

The amount of demos in PSN is way less than XBL.

Dude don't Hijack my comment.

Are you serious?

do pirates find any reason to pirate a game?

i mean seriously? lack of a demo = pirate?

did you pirate mass effect 2? fallout 3? arkham asylum?

if you played the first, that's your demo, the PC version was good, i doubt the experience is going to change on the consoles that much.

and if you are worried about it running on your PC, it runs on consoles, it will run on any decent PC at decent settings at decent framerates.

I don't see a reason for this massive rage.

i never said demos were no good, im just pointing out that what the guy is saying is right, demos are mostly dead.

all this rage is just because he said it first.

There is never a reason to pirate, ever. Get over yourselves.

Lack of demos is a very good reason to pirate. Maybe you're willing to just throw your money at anyone that releases an interesting looking game, but I'm not.

The purpose of the demo is to show everyone how amazing their game is and make people want to buy it. The lack of a demo is a very big indicator to me that the publisher/developer do not have confidence in the quality of their game and so it probably won't be very good. If they don't release a demo, the only reason I'd buy the game is if I get to play it in some other way and end up liking it. This can either be on a friend's computer/console or by pirating it.

"Lack of demos is a very good reason to pirate. Maybe you're willing to just throw your money at anyone that releases an interesting looking game, but I'm not."

by that logic, games like mass effect, arkham asylum, fallout 3 and other amazing games are all perfect choices to pirate without any negative feelings.

seems like you are just another pirates finding reasons to pirate.

first it was DRM, not it's lack of demos, tomorrow it will be a bad menu screen.

I think it is a very good reason for pirating as well.
Where I live games are crazy expensive, and as a student I don't have the time to buy a game at full price without knowing I actually like it. A 10 minute demo will very much help my decision.
If I pirate the game, there is nothing stopping me from buying the game after I have tested it. However, if you do buy the game at full price, and finding out you don't like it after 30 minutes, or that it won't even run on your computer, there is no way to get your money back.

Of course, not every pirate is as "noble", but I actually buy my games, only after I've tested it. A demo stops me from pirating it.

That's exactly what Crytek are afraid of. Crysis 1 was a big tech demo, which meant gamers either tested their rigs with the demo, or with a pirated full copy of the game.

If they gave out a free demo, they can't force people to pay money to test their rigs!

I had the same thought as Viking when I saw this story.

Meeting the system requirements does not guarantee that a game will run cleanly. Without actually playing it on your own system, you can't know for sure. I wouldn't have bought Crysis (and by extension, Crysis Warhead since it runs on the same platform) without the Crysis demo.

I won't be buying Crysis 2 unless I know it will run decently, and I can't do that without a demo. If there's no demo I'll either A. Ignore the game entirely or B. Pirate it to see how it runs. Unfortunately since I'm vehemently anti piracy it'll be option A, which is good for no one because I really enjoyed Crysis.