Releasing a demo can damage your game sales, social games bloss claims

Getting a taster of your game into the hands of consumers is essential, right? Perhaps not.

Speaking to the crowd at DICE 2013, the CEO of crowd designed gaming site Puzzle Clubhouse used data from Xbox 360 releases to suggest that games tended to perform better when gamer’s were still waiting to try them for the first time.

You mean we spent all this money making a demo and getting it out there, and it cut our sales in half?” Jesse Schell stated, as reported by PCGamesN. Yes, that’s exactly what happened to you.

The things with no demo, you’ve gotta buy it if you want to try it,” he continued. The risk you take in making a demo is that people will try your game, but that’s all they’ll ever do. They may not have the desire to then go on and buy the full game.”

Instead of releasing a demo, Schell argues that videos or other media that increase consumer’s want for a game are far more effective.