The first half of 2023 has been relentless when it comes to massive video game releases, and the second half of the year shows no signs of letting up. There's a seven-day period in October where we're going to get Alan Wake 2, Super Mario Wonder, Metal Gear Solid's Master Collection, and Spider-Man 2. Sonic Superstars is rumored to be launching that week too. Simply put, most people either aren't interested or can't afford to play everything the industry has to offer. That's why demos are more important now than ever before.
I had forgotten how integral a role demos played in shaping my video game life until I downloaded Final Fantasy 16’s a few weeks ago. A combination of the love I had seen for the demo on social media and being on the fence about picking up the full game ultimately led to me deciding I'd give it a whirl. Although the trailers for Clive's adventure looked fantastic, I'm one of those annoying people who played and loved Final Fantasy 7 and then dipped out of the series entirely until Square Enix decided to remake it.
I spent two hours playing through the demo and by the end of it, not only had I been persuaded to buy the full game, but I felt the choice had been taken out of my hands. The story was intriguing, the combat exciting, the characters interesting, and that cliffhanger ending… I couldn’t not buy the full game after that. I find it hard to believe anyone who played that demo to completion popped their DualSense down and went, “nah, not for me”.
By the time you read this, I will have played the Pikmin 4 demo too. Again, a series I know very little about having missed the past three occasions I could have hopped aboard the hype train. However, similar to Final Fantasy 16, a mix of social media hype and being able to play part of the game for free has piqued my interest. If Pikmin 4 has the same impact on me as Final Fantasy 16 has, which seems likely, I'd rather anger my bank account than unknowingly miss out on a series I might actually love.
Demos were a little different when I was a kid because the way you learned about new games was different too. The age of getting whatever games I was given, or convincing my mum to buy them as and when I happened to see something I liked in a shop window, was replaced by magazines. PlayStation Magazine, for example, usually included a demo disc with a handful of trials for already-released or upcoming games.
Those demos, coupled with the articles in the magazine itself, became the way I determined what games I wanted to get next. Naturally I couldn't have the full version of everything I liked, but playing demos over and over again allowed me to make an informed decision regarding which games I really wanted. There's a timeline where demos don't exist in which I never played games like Croc, Driver, and Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time. Yeah, they weren’t all winners.
Although the internet was around back then, I didn't really have access to it, nor did most other people. I certainly couldn't pull a smartphone out of my pocket and check out some trailers, or head to a video game site and scroll through all of the games launching for the rest of the year. The gradual ability to do that is what eventually led to the death of the demo disc. Neither I nor my fellow PS1 owners needed to rely on getting a selection of pre-selected demos anymore to determine what games we were going to buy. As the internet got faster and more readily available, we were able to do the research ourselves
Fast forward to 2023, and demos being important again was not nestled between another Suicide Squad delay and The Flash flopping on my bingo card, as much as I'd like to try and claim it was. In hindsight, it probably should have been. This year's slate has been loaded, and triple-A games are more expensive than ever. Even if you could afford all of the big games that launched in June alone (good for you if so), there are only so many hours in the day. Diablo 4 could have occupied the entire month all by itself.
People probably don't have the time to play every single big game launching this year, and the few that do probably can't afford to buy every last one of them. That combination is why demos are more important than ever before. If you're going to drop $70 on a game, it would be nice to know you're not going to regret it a few hours in. Demos are a perfect way to test the waters. They don't need to be long, they don't need to give away important plot points, they just need to give potential players a feel for the game. While the likes of Starfield and Spider-Man 2 will sell regardless, games like Armored Core 6 and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown could definitely benefit from the demo treatment. They’re two games I'm not sure I want to take the plunge on as I’ll either be playing something else or waiting for other big titles to arrive when they launch, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.