Remember the 90's and early 2000's when Playstation Underground was huge around the world? This was the first time we got a taste of massive demonatrations because of how many games Sony had at their disposal. All brands have expanded (or dwindled) since then and half of the reasoning is because of their marketing schemes. Nothing brings gamers closer to their purchase than demo's. As much as I love reviews, they are arbitrary, but demos are not. They let you whet your palette for the gist of a games artistic direction and style. Jampacked and Playstation underground were my only ways of knowing what I was getting into before I asked my parents for that purchase. Of course, ensuring my grades were good...i'd have a new game once a week because of weekly checks. Demos got me giddy and forewarned me ahead of time, giving me, the gamer the truest test of choice. 

After last generation I became annoyed at how irrelevant review scores are becoming per person and just used meta's as a guideline (the redundancy of abritrary systems, yet again). Demos would bring back that one on one publicity tactic to get gamers to truly respond accurately with their dollar. I understand that games cost more, so companies don't want to risk it, but why be so dishonest? Let us try before we buy.

There needs to be a resurrection to gain consumer trust and I believe this would be a step in the right directions. We live in a digital age and with the advent of digital gaming and mass downloading with interchangable HDD replacement, its time. 

Demos are almost universally bad for business so I don't see that happening any time soon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QM6LoaqEnY

Hopefully we will do away with reviews in the future. Demos should come back.

Demo's actually force publishers to make good games. Thus, the end of demos. Now, you either know someone who owns the game so you can try it first, or you buy and pray.

Won't happen. The overwhelming majority has already spoken, and demos aren't necessary. Enjoy the industry we've all helped create folks.

So dishonesty is the best policy. Its amazing how the world works. I actually purchased more because of rentals and demos. 

Neh, Demo's can have controlled sections while the rest of the game can be awful so I don't really care either ways

I almost never play a demo anyway unless its the demo of a zomfg game like SSB or something

This! It forces developers to be held responsible for quality.

What is your primary motivator for a purchase?

Personal Interest followed by reviews/scores!

So if its a genre/franchise that I like, that will be my first checkmark cause I won't really care for games like Bread Simulator even if that were to get high scores and then reviews/scores. I mostly use Metacritic cause I don't really trust the opinion of any single reviewer since many have different tastes so metacrtic just jumbles them all up into one number to show where the game might land in terms of consensus. Its not a perfect system but there isn't much of an alternative