I was surfing the Playstation Store out of boredom, and I went to check if there were any new demos since there have been a few interesting titles released lately. However, I failed to find anything new despite not having checked in like two months, and the top 10 newest releases still had entries from October.

There was a time when we could get a sneak peek at a game, where we could see what was to come. Apparently, such time is now gone, and we should feel lucky if we get an open beta or something like that. Now, you cannot experience for yourself a game until you buy it, at most you can watch gameplay videos on the internet and decide from there on if you're down for it or not.

I'm honestly disappointed at this. There existed almost more demos back in the 90s than right now, despite the fact it's now much easier to acquire games since they also come digitally. We may still be lucky, after all KOF XIV did have a demo and even had a re-release when they updated the graphics, but we've reached a point that we could go a full month without seeing any new demo available.

Most probably, the problem is piracy. Even if they're giving out just part of a game, hackers may know how to extract the full game from it. The leaks we've been having in later years could support this theory, further justifying why companies are reluctant upon giving us access to their titles.

Another possible theory, maybe even combined with the one above, is that games aren't released as complete any longer. Season Passes, DLCs, Expansion Packs... That seems to run the business now, essentially meaning that the demos have become much bigger and they cost $60 now and they're available at any retailer. This puts the blame more on companies, but I still believe gamers played a role in the disappearance of demos.

I'm not easily attracted to new games, and the demos were the perfect tease to ultimately drive me to buy the game. Without demos being released, I must be even more selective when buying new games. The lack of demos is one more reason why I keep drifting away from the videogame world.

Just wanted to let this out as a rant, but I wondered what other people thought of this. Maybe it's just a Sony thing and the other consoles do get demos, which would only dig Sony's tomb deeper than ever before.

Well In my opinion company's no longer release or make demo's because they know the quality of the product they are putting out(crap quality), probably won't line up or even be close to the quality of the demo and well because a demo can make or brake a game and can influence you to buy or not buy a final product.

But demo's can either steer you towards or away from a game and now a days games are basically sold into two phases(and a secret third phase), first launch-buggy and unfinished broken game released for 60$, 2nd phase-release update after update to fix game and final third phase-lock game behind dlc pay walls basically pay to have content that is essentially the ending or final act of the game.

But demos are considered too risky for this current generation of games and gaming developers because they truly are releasing some of the most cash grabbing and broken games I've ever seen, not to mention alot of the games are drastically different from the final product, but I myself want a demo from every game that comes out only to force better quality games from creators and developers, it would help me steer clear from games that are riding on past glory like just cause 4(I was so bored I returned the game after owning it for a day) and pay walls like (insert every capcom game here).

The Switch gets demos for some of it's upcoming games and some games that are out now. Not just 1st party games like the Pokemon Let's Go games either, 3rd party games have gotten demos as well such as Octopath Traveler and an upcoming game called Daemon X Machina. Not every game has gotten a demo though, as was the case with Smash Bros Ultimate.

I know, it seems like that time goes on, we get lesser and lesser demos to try out.

I even remember like 2 decades ago that Sony releases a PS1 game that features nothing but demos every month in their magazines, and sure, the internet kinda killed that, but they at least had those demos to try out in the PlayStation Store, but we started seeing less and less of that between the release of the PS3 to present day with the PS4.

Divine Aurora : I do agree on why companies don't want to do these demos anymore, because like you mentioned, it's more of a risky gamble to have these demos available to the public, because although yeah, you may draw more people in, but at the same time, may lose more people in the process.

And yeah, ever since the whole updates started coming into the picture, that is where we seen less and less demos, and this is why in early games, probably 2010 and earlier, game developers rely on demos for people to play and file complaints that if anything is broken in the game, and by the time it's released, there is no problem. Now, they can fully release the game without any demos, and if someone has a complaint that something's broken, they just be like "Ok, let's add this as a bug fix in the next update".

You should also keep in mind that the only way to get reliable information about games was through those publications. The demo disc was just to entice you to buy the magazine after all.

Now the Internet is basically in nearly every home and the fact that paper based media is slowly disappearing means that they don't have to entice you as much to get it. You can just look it up. That's why we have so many game review sites. Those people obviously get the demos and first looks because their reach is wider than that of the old magazines and cheaper too. 

I mean let's not also forget the times where reviewers where paid money or exclusives just to give an average or a poor game a decent score better than it deserved. 

I'd say something about games being able to be broken a lot easier as well but unless the developer leaves all the code in the demos then its not really a talking point. 

I haven't seen good demos at all for Playstation in a long time but I still see and play a bunch of Nintendo consoles.

It seems though that Alphas and betas are more replacing demos.