Do you think Demos help sales of a game or hinder them? I have played a few Demos that put me of a game i was definately going to buy but then Demos have made me buy a game i wouldn't of picked up twice at the store. So does it really make them loose or gain sale or does it even out by say one person wasn't planning on buying a game then wanting to after playing the demo and someone was goin to buy it until they played the demo and now they dont end up buying it therefore one sale was lost and one was gained.

thats a good question. when i bought my ps3 i wanted to buy a few games, but i demo'ed them first. never bought one ps3 game other than MGS4 afterwords

Neither.

Demos are exactly that, the proof is in the pudding, in this case the name: it's a DEMO, it demonstrates the product that's it.

The Intention is only the encourage awareness of the product the consumer can determine if they like it or not, but either way they know it exists and that's the point of a demo.

Agree with this one.

What determines the success of sales of the game are a number of factors that consist: popular brands/ franchises, install bases, good review scores and genre of the game at issue.

For me, it depends on the game. Playing the demo for Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm convinced me to buy a PS3, but a lousy demo could put people off a bit. But you've gotta bear in mind that a demo is exactly that, and if a demo puts you off of a game that you were looking forward to, I'd say rent it before making the final call. It could really go either way and it depends on the person, but for me, demos can be more enticing than a trailer.

It depends whether its a good demo. A sizeable demo with all of the features from the full game will attract people....

It all depends on the demo, some will encourage you to buy the game and some will turn you away from the game.

Depends if they are good demos or bad. I think normally they hinder sales. I have been put off by more demos than made me buy.

This was different for shareware games. They didn't only give a short demo but dragged you into the story/gameplay so you wanted to finish it.
The worst thing you can do is a short demo of a RPG.

it a double edge sword, some games can get by on a bluff and once you have bought them...crap city

where as other ones you might not think about getting (bioshock) will charm you enough to go for teh full game

thinking back over time, demos tend to have a weird affect, they alot of times have killed games for me, like Star Wars Unleashed, it was a good demo, but playing it made me feel like I was afraid of, that it would be sort of a hack and slash game hallway after hallway of slaying guys, and that kind of turned me off, same with Too human, so here I was on the fence, even a little more on the positive side and the demos pushed to the negative camp. But they've also done positive things, I had the battlefield bad company demo early and loved it and even showed it off to a ton of friends who ended up picking the game up, so I actually helped sell it to other people in that case.

There is another negative potential, the kind were the demo is good, but gives you just enough of the experience to fill you up, where your like I loved the demo, and even go back and play it alot, but after a few demo hours it seemed unlikely the game had enough left to offer me for a full priced purchase. I bought Burnout paradise but I could actually see their demo having that affect. Even Bad Company's demo could do that. being that they both offer an online experience that could give you countless hours of gameplay.