Have you already played the Resident Evil Village demo? Maybe you're waiting as a non-Playstation 4/5 owner till your chance avails itself.
I want to know, is making a demo time-limited and date-limited a complete trash way to go about a demo? Do you not give a Frodo? These are the things we need to establish. I already know most of you already know if you're going to play it or not, and that the demo did likely little to dissuade you as it's pretty similar in substance to the "prequel," Resident Evil 7.
Image copyright of Capcom
Over the weekend, Playstation owners were able to tackle half of the demo from a set date and period of time for only 30 minutes of gameplay. Better hope you didn't meander through the demo otherwise you won't get to experience all of it. I found that alone to be a testament to the failure of the demo as is. So why would Capcom insist on going about this tactic, as they did previously for the last few titles released?
Really all there is, is for security reasons in dissuading modders and individuals in tearing apart everything within the demo piece by piece. The demo is only about 9 gigabytes in size, making it obvious the full game is not present. If the whole game isn't there for the demo, why does it even matter? As a gamer who played the demo myself, I found that I really wanted to explore all the details of the village and look around but the game forced my hand. I wanted to search throughout an abandoned house for any supplies, yet I couldn't as the timer was screaming at me, you don't have the time to do so. This in theory sounds good in Capcom's perspective, as now it should make want to play the game more upon release. That doesn't guarantee that outcome in any way. I may very well no longer care about this section of the game as I already went through it, and know what's there. I also may do the opposite and cave to their perspective and spend that extra time without the timer nagging me.
As a franchise, Resident Evil has such an enormous foundation, and incredibly large fanbase spanning generations at this point, a demo in all reality isn't necessary for them. I could see why RE7 needed it, as it was the first in the series to be in a true first-person perspective experience (not counting those on-rails games for the Wii/Wii U). This one seems as if the demo is more of a gift to get gamers interested in the upcoming release of the game. I don't believe in the slightest that a demo without a time constraint hinders a full release. That's complete bullocks.
So where is it you land on this? The current state of demos is nearly dead in the industry. It's more shocking to hear a game has a demo than not. Quite the opposite of a decade ago when demos were nearly necessary. Also a demo is a huge time waste for a company, as it requires resources with no payout for a demo. A literal playable advertisement. Sure it potentially brings in additional revenue, but this is the "8th" game in the franchise (shh, I know it's not, there's way more). It would be quite shocking if this was truly the first game in the series a person was playing. That has to be a wicked minority of all that end up playing the full game.
What if other companys do the same thing for all of their own games? If this becomes the industry standard set by an industry leader, what outcome will that have? We're only speaking of demos, making it unlikely to really change much within the industry, but I could see frustration from a lot of gamers trying out a demo and being so annoyed with the pre-set limitations that they refuse to purchase the game because of it. That may be a childish reaction, but if 1% of people who played the demo acted like such, that can still tally up to millions of dollars lost in revenue when talking about large corporations like that of Capcom. Smaller developers would have very differing views unless their games did well, that 1% may be crucial for their longevity as a company going forward.
We'd love to hear your thoughts! Demos may very well go way of the vampire, as they are almost already extinct. Making everything I said a moot point. Either way I'm still excited for the newest entry in this never ending franchise.
Resident Evil Village is available on May 7th, 2021 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Series S, Google Stadia, and Microsoft Windows (Steam, etc. etc.)
The demo is "currently" availabe for Playstation 4/5:
Village Demo, PlayStation early access, only available for 8 hours: *already occurred
US: April 17, 5:00 PM PDT
Europe: April 18, 7:00 PM CEST
Castle Demo, PlayStation Early Access, only available for 8 hours:
US: April 24, 5:00 PM PDT
Europe: April 25, 7:00 PM CEST
Full (Village and Castle), Multi-platform Demo, only available for 24 hours:
US: May 1, 5:00 PM PDT
Europe: May 2, 2:00 AM CEST
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