<snip>A good game and good demo lead to people buying the product. A mediocre game, with a good demo, hurts future sales. Finally, a good demo for a crap game leads to a huge public backlash. Think Aliens: Colonial Marines if you need proof positive of that.
1. A good game + good demo = win win situation, it also means the developers put more effort into making game because the demo has to leave a good impression with the to-be consumers/players.
2. A mediocre game + good demo, hurts future sales = not necessarily you're forgetting that there are so many variables when it comes to making a game. Maybe the the guy who came up with the original concept for the game decided to leave halfway through development and the guy they got to replace him didnt have the same vision for the game as the previous guy? or maybe a lot of the original team of developers left the studio or got sacked part-way through and the people they hired to finish the game off were either totally useless or had their own way of coding the game which led to glitches and bugs with the finished title.
Providing the game came for a reputable developer, i wouldnt be so quick to judge their releases.
Long story short - Im subscribed to TotalBiscuit on youtube and he reviews quite a lot of pc ports, More often than not there are studios out there whose sole purpose in life is to port games over to PC - they might make the odd small to medium sized game here and there but their bread and butter is porting.....
Now you will get studios that do a horrendous job porting games over then you will get studios that do a decent job.
Some of the worst ports out there is the studio that does all the
Arc System Works stuff, so think blazblue or guilty gear. recently the blazblue series has appeared on steam and i think it was the second game (that TB reviewed) that was quite bad - but then again this is coming from a studio thats known for doing half arsed ports.
Compare that to
Platinum games who did the port for Metal Gear Rising and they did a complete stellar job of it and it was their FIRST TIME porting a game over to PC. They also ported 'The Legend Of Korra' over to PC - from what i gather they did an OK job of it, but the mixed reviews it received were more to do with the game, gameplay and the story itself rather then how it played as a port, but youre obviously limited with what you can do when the game is more or less like a 'cartoonier' version of plants vs zombies or DBZ Shin Budokai on the PSP.
Another example is DICE - They are capable of making GREAT games, I remember playing the shit out of the BF2 demo for 2 or 3 weeks before I went out there and bought the actual game, I also played the BF1942 demo with friends on a LAN and it was a hilarious amount of fun. Its only BF4 which seemed to be complete and utterly broken from the start and still is in a way when you consider ongoing problems with netcode & other bugs etc etc. BF3 had the issue with bullets that curved around corners but that was fixed fairly quickly, People rage about how their never gonna buy another EA, DICE or BF game but how much of the problem was a result of EA pushing DICE to release BF4 before it was honestly truly ready for release? EA wanted to beat CoD to the shelves.
3. a good demo for a crap game leads to a huge public backlash = see above, imo a crap game is just the same as a mediocre game. The way i see it is 'Great game' 'OK game' & 'utter bollocks game' - 'OK game' being the middle ground - neither good or bad and 'utter bollocks' being horrendously bad.
a public backlash is dependant on how much the media, publisher & to a lesser extent the general public/community hype the game. A butt load of fingers are pointing at IGN - because thats what IGN do apart from taking bribes.
I never played Colonial Marines but from what i gather it was bad because you had different developers working on it - Timegate studios were the original people who started working on it, they went bankrupt so gearbox software started working on it again, then sega outsourced the work to two or more different studios yadayadayada and too many cooks spoil the broth.
Sega also had a class lawsuit filed against them claiming that Gearbox and Sega falsely advertised Aliens: Colonial Marines by showing demos at trade shows like PAX and E3 that didn't end up being accurate representations of the final product.
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So you see, Colonial Marines had a lot of stuff wrong with it which inevitably had a serious detrimental effect on the end product.... Throw in the argument that media as well as Gearbox/Sega were getting people hyped for the game and theres your backlash.
Its no different then a holy prophet (or 'a' messiah or certain messiah) promising to lead his flock (his people~) to the promised lands but then after spending more than 100 years wandering about in the wilderness when most of the original generation have died on the journey from natural causes or sickness, he turns around and says that it was all a lie.
How many times has a friend or member of family promised you something then didnt deliver???
I too would be furious if i was lead around the garden path so to speak - so would anyone one else for that matter.
So my logic isnt as flawed as you think.
Anyway, it took a while to type all this out while i did my research and i do apologise if its a wall of text.