@GrimToadstool said:
Corporate greed leads to competition, competition leads to consumer benefits. That’s how capitalism works. Greed is only bad, if it comes from a cartel, because it kills the competition. That’s why usually cartels are illegal… unless the gourverment is part of it cough German Cars cough.
Take me now 
Must be my dream ?!
One of AoE’s big advantages was the high level of demos they created, so I very much hope they follow that tradition, too.
I personally got to know AoE by the demo I accidentially discovered. It was provided with my Win98 SE OEM CD and I was blown away by the game.
Times have changed so I’m curious if and how they will provide us with a demo.
Demos used to come on discs that were included with magazines, too. That was the way I was introduced to many of the games I get nostalgic about today. Now there is hardly a magazine to look forward to just to read about PC gaming news, let alone one that includes a disc with demos.
When I first played Age of Empires, it was using a demo that my bro found online. This must have been 16 or 17 years ago. We could only play one campaign or whatever (pretty sure it had Persians) but we played it over and over. We eventually got the full game and every expansion afterward. Really looking forward to playing this again.
In Australia the full game came inside a packet of Nutri-Grain. That’s real Iron Age Food! Was only about $4 back then.
We also got “Timone and Puumba’s Jungle Pinball”. That was a fun game, that you could make last forever with extra balls (I think I had about 50). The game had a little glitch though where pickets on the right would not re-appear, making extra balls harder. CD ended up cracked and that was the end of that.
Despite these games being in a large promotion, I don’t see any of them for sale as “rare cereal box CD edition”
I bet the AOE: DE Demo will only work on computers with that particular type of Windows 10 installed on it. As GamerZakh pointed out on YouTube, Age of Empires: DE is perhaps the most exclusive game ever.
They already have a demo, it’s what we played at Gamescomm. It would be pretty stupid not to release it more widely, particularly given so many people are disappointed by not getting into the beta.
I would assume we will see it sooner rather than later. Given the full game is 8-10 gbs the demo shouldnt be too large. I think it was the size of games that led to demos falling in popularity as Internet speeds didn’t keep up. Now most people download games and Internet speeds have caught up they may have a renaissance though ‘free to play’ weekends seem to be the popular modern equivalent.
@“Mystic Taboo” said:
They already have a demo, it’s what we played at Gamescomm. It would be pretty stupid not to release it more widely, particularly given so many people are disappointed by not getting into the beta.I would assume we will see it sooner rather than later. Given the full game is 8-10 gbs the demo shouldnt be too large. I think it was the size of games that led to demos falling in popularity as Internet speeds didn’t keep up. Now most people download games and Internet speeds have caught up they may have a renaissance though ‘free to play’ weekends seem to be the popular modern equivalent.
During the golden age of video game magazines, multiple demos fit on a cd/dvd. When they started to become bigger and bigger, they couldn’t be fit on these disks anymore. During that time, DSL wasn’t established yet and thus internet wasn’t a good method of demo distribution either. The only thing what was left was video-coverage on magazine-dvds.
Now internet is fast and even large demos are not a problem to handle.
So yes, you are completly right with that.
About free weekends or open-beta periods well it’s nice to have them, but it won’t be enough for aoede. Most of the target market is now in their 30s with jobs and underage children. Taking time off at when the publishers want them to isn’t going to work. Free weekends work for a teenage audience.
@GrimToadstool said:
@“Mystic Taboo” said:
They already have a demo, it’s what we played at Gamescomm. It would be pretty stupid not to release it more widely, particularly given so many people are disappointed by not getting into the beta.I would assume we will see it sooner rather than later. Given the full game is 8-10 gbs the demo shouldnt be too large. I think it was the size of games that led to demos falling in popularity as Internet speeds didn’t keep up. Now most people download games and Internet speeds have caught up they may have a renaissance though ‘free to play’ weekends seem to be the popular modern equivalent.
During the golden age of video game magazines, multiple demos fit on a cd/dvd. When they started to become bigger and bigger, they couldn’t be fit on these disks anymore. During that time, DSL wasn’t established yet and thus internet wasn’t a good method of demo distribution either. The only thing what was left was video-coverage on magazine-dvds.
Now internet is fast and even large demos are not a problem to handle.
So yes, you are completly right with that.About free weekends or open-beta periods well it’s nice to have them, but it won’t be enough for aoede. Most of the target market is now in their 30s with jobs and underage children. Taking time off at when the publishers want them to isn’t going to work. Free weekends work for a teenage audience.
Is the target market the over 30’s? They will want sales off the existing community I’m sure (I’m not convinced they realise that the AOE community is not neccessarily the same as the AOK community) but their previous offerings AE:O and Castle Siege were clearly pitched to a younger target audience. There may be no linkage between being windows store only and their target market, but it’s noticeable how many games for a younger audience are on the Windows store when compared to steam.
I think AOE:DE could well be MS’s Force Awakens, upgraded but same fundamental schtick to capture a new generation. I’ve not read anywhere that the team has reached out to AOE or ROR players on Voobly or Gameranger for balance assistance and having spoken to some they don’t even like the Upatch whilst quite a few play a mod with writing researchable in houses in the Stone Age.
They haven’t really bothered to supply the community on these forums with any new information about the DE indeed most of the activity is going on via Facebook/Twitter/Mixer which I would hazard are more younger person focused, so I suspect this might be their attempt to bring the series to a new younger audience.
Effectively something to raise awareness amongst new gamers of the series as AOE did for AOK but this time as a prelude to AOE IV.
@“Mystic Taboo” You’re making a good point. Mine wasn’t so much that they aren’t or shouldn’t market to the younger audience, but that they already have a lot of interest audience in the 30s and the strategy they need to adress them has to be different.