When I was a kid, my family wasn’t particularly wealthy. I picked up my PlayStation from an uncle who was fed up with Tomb Raider and its sequels, and most of my games are from “Growed up from Digimon” or “impatient with Final Fantasy” family Inherited from a friend. They are disgraceful. In a small village on the outskirts of England’s grey, drizzling hinterland (read: Derby), I rely on games to entertain myself. But there is no continuous availability.
Enter demo one. If you’re around 30-40 years old and from Europe, you know Demo One: it was the first PAL PlayStation demo disc, packaged with the original release model PlayStation. It was ubiquitous in 1995 and remained a staple until the early ’00s. My version contains rather weird trailers for Gran Turismo, Medieval, Kula World, Tekken 3, and Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped, Metal Gear Solid, Spice World, and Spyro the Dragon. I bet this disc is the reason I’m so obsessed with Tekken – I’ve been playing in tournaments ever since, then making pilgrimages to Japan to play in arcades.
The demo was impressive. My peers had different Demo One discs – possibly including Warhawk, Twisted Metal, Ridge Racer or Wipeout – and I see similar imprints to this day. Depending on which issue of the official PlayStation Magazine you choose – or the disc you cut from your buddy – you’ll get another little window into the vast PSOne back catalog.
Back when getting a new game was a biannual treat (at best), looping demo discs and playing a small selection of games was a lifesaver. And, importantly for the devs, it pushes me to go out and buy full titles of anything I can afford to play (thanks to a crappy paper loop circuit that earns me a hefty £1.50 a day).
Fast forward 10 years and I just bought an Xbox 360 in part from my PS2 and all of its games. I’m in love; it’s the first time I’ve played a console connected to the internet, and for some reason I’ve been called a slur on Halo 3. so cool! What’s this? This fancy Xbox Marketplace app has an entire section dedicated to demos. Astonishing!
My love for vertical slices will continue here; see all the fuss in Just Cause 2, try Dead or Alive 4 to see if it scratches the iron fist, wonder why everyone is so excited about Lost Excited for Planet of the Worlds, I honestly believe Too Human is probably one of the best games I’ve ever played based on about 10 minutes of gameplay…that’s those days! Working as an after-school sous-chef gives me enough cash to rent games through Lovefilm, so at this point it’s routine to play demos and then rent discs of the final product – and with plenty of time but cash-poor, it’s ideal.
As a consumer, the demo allowed me to try the game myself. Sure, the Official Xbox Magazine and gamesTM might tell me that Kane & Lynch is fine – but when I can download the game over my poor internet connection and try (kind of) for myself? Like myself at all trade shows now, riding from booth to booth, playing 10 minutes of games, and forming a conclusive, “well-informed” opinion on it all. Some publishers even know about it and offer E3-specific demos (looking at you Capcom here) to make you, the gamer, feel like you’re part of the crowd.
Then things changed. At the end of the 360 era, by the rough releases of PS4 and Xbox One, game demos became less and less common. Fewer developers are uploading them to various digital storefronts, and early access games or betas have become the norm. Then, somehow, we were all tricked into paying for early access. Right now, the only demo I remember playing was Final Fantasy Stranger of Paradise – somehow that didn’t stop me from choosing the final product.
Demos have been slowly disappearing for a while, but rumor has it that PlayStation is basically forcing developers to offer demos for games on the PlayStation Plus Premium service. In late April 2022, an update to the PlayStation Developer Portal indicated that all games with a wholesale price of $34 or more included a two-hour trial period for PS Plus Premium members. These won’t be exactly past demos, but it’s probably the closest we’ll ever get.
These demos must be available within three months of the game’s release date — and must be available to consumers for a year. This is what Sony said. Platform holders believe that if you want to buy a game, you have to be able to track it first. It’s a bit more work for developers (but hey, demos have always been — you can’t just take a chunk of the game wholesale from the middle of a build, right?) but it’s great for customers.
Although now I can afford more games than I did as a kid, I have the opposite problem compared to the past; I’m flush with cash and pressed for time. So being able to flip through the proverbial PlayStation Plus aisles, pick up some obscure Japanese games that are ringing down my street, and try them out for an hour or so before I make up my mind… sounds dreamy! It will help me choose which games to choose from and which ones are better than any discount or Steam sale. I bet many other gamers are in the same boat.
Some initial reports on the PS Plus demo situation seem to dictate that developers have to manually create demos for their games – a proper vertical slice, like the Demo One or Xbox marketplaces. However, now that some things have been figured out, it looks like simply giving you access to the beginning of the game will do the trick. This feels like a nice middle ground between developers and consumers; it’s not a lot of work for an already struggling crew already struggling to meet an unshakable Christmas deadline date, and it also allows players to try something before buying.
My taste in games is formed by demos. I also found some absolute gems by playing the demo disc and downloading the “Fuck him, why not” game through the digital storefront. I wrote a dissertation on Soul Reaver, and I probably wouldn’t have been so fascinated by it if I hadn’t had the opening and doomed early part of the open world get drilled into my head by an overworked, worn-out demo disc.
I hope that Sony’s insistence on offering demos to players with PS Plus Premium will help other players find equally important games for themselves. Maybe even give them a chance to seriously misjudge the game’s potential, as I was convinced from a poor but beautiful demo in 2008 that Too Human would be an honest-to-God full-time player.
