| Kyouryuu |
  Posted 17th Dec 2003 2:44pm |
L4Y Member
Post 0 / 11
 |
I'm not sure what marketing moron thinks exclusive game demos are a good idea, but they are an absolutely horrid practice. You can't help but note teh obvious exclusion from the list is FilePlanet, a site notorious for somehow getting the "big deals" with new game demos, then routing would-be downloaders onto a major bottleneck of a network, forcing them (and others wanting to grab different files) to wait upwards of 2 hours while they peddle their "Premium" service.
Game demos exist for one reason and one reason alone - to get the gaming communities exposed to your product. As such, you want them to reach the maximum ponteial audience. And common sense follows that this means allowing any site that wants to host your demo to host your demo, instead of securing exclusive privileges for one site.
Of recent note in my own experience was Microsoft's Freelancer. Microsoft's exclusive deal with FilePlanet in the first few days of the demo (right down to an obligatory keycode handed out exclusively by FilePlanet) forever soured me on the game.
No doubt with the upcoming releases will FilePlanet be pandering to those game companies for exclusive rights, and the real deal with IGN only gives them more clout. Let's just hope the developers are smart enough to see the forest for the trees. |
Foe