Doom's shareware sold Doom for me. Most recently the Tekken 8 demo sold itself. In between there have been a ton of games where the demo was helpful in deciding whether or not to play something.
I'm just surprised that in all that time there wasn't a single one that at a minimum confirmed a game was what you were expecting if you were on the fence.
Nah, demos largely disappeared because they not only took a bunch of resources to make but also had a far better chance of convincing you not to buy a game than to buy it, especially if you had other means of marketing it. Many people even enjoyed the demo but felt that they got their fill and therefore didn't want to keep playing, or maybe they didn't want anything out of the game beyond what the demo offered.
Note what kinds of games populate the Next Fest. Mostly games without any other form of marketing. Anecdotally, I found four demos that interested me, and all four convinced me not to to bother keeping up with the game as it gets closer to release. EEDAR, later absorbed by NPD, the combined entity of which is now known as Circana, works with lots of big developers and publishers and found a correlation with demos losing sales. In later analysis of demos, devs found that you could (a) convince someone to buy the game, (b) convince someone that they don't like the game, (c) give someone everything they wanted from the game, where they don't want to play any more, or (d) give someone everything that they wanted from the game, where they don't need any more than what the demo provides. Note that 3 out of those 4 don't result in a sale. A trailer tended to be much better marketing material. Of course, your mileage may vary if the game's loop or selling point is hard to articulate, but in most cases, seeing someone else have a good time with a game is going to be more likely to convince you to buy a game than if you had a demo where you might not understand its appeal. It's why games are built around how well they present on Twitch these days.
The Homeworld 3 demo is impressive and I'm really enjoying Lightyear Frontier as well. Definitely going to buy both when they come out in March. I've been hooked on the Homeworld universe since I started playing it in the 90's (25 years ago! lol I'm old) so it's been quite a long wait but it looks like BBI have done a great job. I've loved them since Hardspace Shipbreaker so I knew this would be something special.
If you're the type who wants to unwind from the hyper-realistic art style of most mainstream games nowadays, while also exploring modern Filipino life and culture through the eyes of a young adult student, the Until Then demo might be up your alley. Aside from the pixelated art style coming from the devs themselves, who are also wholly Filipino themselves, there's quite a substantial attention to detail when it comes to the greater Metro Manila and the suburban locations around, including our local circuses. Oh, and there's also quite a bit of mysteriousness and some philospophy to it, as vaguely evidenced by its Playstation 5 trailer.
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