"One diagram, shown above, depicts a character whose sword progressively shrinks as the player continues to run the demo"

My sword shrunk just reading this article...

The idea that Sony games will take things away from you as you play more and more instead of rewarding you for playing is not appealing to consumers. As David D mentioned in his comment, the general populous will not associate this functionality with the activity of playing a demo. They'll associate this functionality with the activity of playing "New game X". If this idea becomes common among all new Sony games, consumers may choose to jump platforms. I hope they do their homework on consumer confidence/satisfation before they roll this one out to try to make a few more sales on a particular game.

I guess people are misunderstanding. You get the game for free, if you don't this effect to happen, you pay for the game.

@Glen Watson

What david and brent are saying is that if they are not carefully enough implementing this eroding functionality people may associate the sword shrinking feature to the game, and not to the amount of hours they had spent playing the demo.

The problem I have with this is that Sony thinks that this is patentable technology. This technology has been used in shareware software for many years.

I have to agree with David and Brent about the issues involved with this. The demos I've seen before give you an introduction to the game play...an intro mission, minimal level cap, locked game content, etc. However, in all cases you weren't given access to the whole game, only a glimpse to "wet your appetite". Giving a player access to a game then taking it away little by little over time, as it has been said, would take away from the interest the consumer would have with getting the full game. In a worse case scenario, it may also deteriorate the consumers interest in purchasing future games from the developer and for the platform with assumptions future games would follow the same path, so why bother starting the game at all to have it taken away.

Critical reaction to this idea aside, I am not a fan of patenting these sorts of "ideas" in entertainment software.

Namco patenting the "mini-game during loading screens" feature for Ridge Racer for the PlayStation (which was a launch title as you may remember) has affected every single disc based game since. Who knows what sort of innovation and greatness we could have seen if all developers could pursue the idea of having mini-games during loading screens?

That was 15 years ago, I'd wager we would have seen some amazing things that would have turned a negative (loading time and loading screens) into a big positive for many games.

As far as Sony's idea goes, I would be open to the idea myself. I would not mind at all, to play a full game for free to see if it would be my sort of thing. And when my character's abilities begin to suffer, I can then at that point determine if whether I want to buy it or not.

But David has a great point about consumer perception. This sort of model doesn't exist anywhere else and consumer might be confused in many regards.

@Amir - This may not be a patent that excludes but a defensive patent. Many huge tech corprorations like IBM end up sharing most of their technology in patent-sharing agreements but they still patent the hell out of everything just so that someone else can't exclude them from a technology. Remember all those ridiculous lawsuits against the big 3 console-makers by immersion or the idiots who sued Blackberry because of a vague patent?

As for the tech itself, it will increase options rather than decrease them. Rather than have tiny games, we might see bigger demos which would allow for users to better sample games to begin with and aid purchases.

Sounds like a bug. Write it up! Lol @ picturing the game going progressively go from a low severity to a full-on crash.

This could potentially only hurt Sony in the long-term. Demo's don't quite sell videogames in the market context of today. I say market context of today because shareware has proven this wrong 15 years earlier. It's too bad the shareware model has died out without reaching its true potential.

Some research even suggested that demo's actually hurt sales because people didn't like the demo. This not necessarily meaning the game was bad, the demo was just bad. This system from Sony has this problem written all over it.

Um. Surely the point of a demo is to provide a quick sampler to give people an idea of the game. So by the point when the game starts to degrade, surely the player will have already decided if they want to buy the game or move on - and meanwhile, anyone who really likes the game will have already played a significant portion of the game.

It just sounds like an overly convoluted version of unlockable DLC.

@Amir: as an aside, I'm convinced that the Namco "loading game" patent would never be taken to court: there's several examples of prior art from the mid-1980s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loading_screen

Admittedly, both the games listed were published in the UK and may not have been distributed in the US (where the patent is held), but I'd be surprised if there wasn't any US-specific prior art!

I remember some game that did this - the devs basically put in bugs and such in non-release code so that any code other than release code would not run. This didn't end up well if it wasn't advertised as such. Something even more subtle as this, as others have noted, will not go over any better I don't think without something more intrusive.

And really, as far as demos go, shouldn't they be quick to get? If you're downloading the whole game to demo play it, that's going to be more annoying than anything else especially for AAA games that may be something like 7 GB. Not to mention pirates getting creative.

That said, it's an interesting idea - essentially reducing the amount of work needed to put out a demo which can be a big time consumer. Probably not the best implementation though.

I see this as potentially fun.. players might be pressed to find workarounds to progress if some abilities are taken away from them.

@Jamie -
I agree demo's should provide a quick sampler, but what happens when you're a kid who plays the demo and then you call up your friend and say "Hey come over and check out this cool new game"!

Your friend comes over and they boot up the demo only to discover your character has half the abilities he used to have. The friend never saw the full awesomeness the original kid saw, and may not be as enthusiastic. I guess it really depends if the game is implemented on a per-system DRM model (where the demo degrades over time), or on a per-session time based model (which has been done as a variant on the shareware model in the casual game space before, so probably isn't patentable.)

As a game developer, I'd hate to have to support this "feature". QA is going to be testing progression where you get the bigger and bigger sword as you progress and what happens as a result - and then will have to go back through and test the reverse - smaller and smaller (weaker and weaker) weapons. Maybe it's not a big deal, but imo the dollar amount of extra dev and qa cost could better be spent marketing the game through traditional means, vs re-writing it to gimp itself.

@Stephen
- Titan Quest actually DRM'd their game in a similar manner. If you cracked the game (DRM not running), when you went into certain areas like going down some cave or something, the game would unexpectantly crash... by design. Users would post these issues on the TQ forums, which is rather comical... but alas, I'm off topic.

Inherently, isn't the point of a demo to showcase the best parts of a game? I agree with the first few posters who expressed trepidation. Best case is the demo using this technology accoplishes what demos do nowadays, without this technique. Worst case though, is the player associates the degraded gameplay with the finished product.

I've always been a fan of demos which let you get a taste of the full potential of a game, without any spoilers, of course. Games which let you try powers, weapons, etc that are not available immediately in the full game. This seems to go in the opposite direction. Rather than a "short" but "deep" experience, which I think would entice a buyer, this gives them a "long" but progressively "shallower" experience, which seems like it might be a turn off.

Dumb idea. A lot people are really going understand what is happening to the game. It will just seem gimped. People don't read a lot of details when they get demos, they just load it up and play. If it becomes borked they will think the game is bad.

Further, I think that Sony is not really being honest. What they are really doing is thinking that people are satisfied with a demo experience they will keep playing it and then not buy the game. This way the demo disappears under a time limit slowly.

Why not just keep using the 30 minutes of actual gameplay as a demo. And leave it at that.

So I get to level 2 and all pickups have a red cross saying "only on the full game". Open my inventory and some weapon says "expired", and go to the store, where it says...

You know what they say: "get out while you're winning".
I think it'd work better just to put a time limit. Demos are intended to tease people's taste.

@Ephraim-- I agree. I don't think they'd be able to patent this.

Thanks Thomas Lo for the clarification on the possible nature of this patent.

Andre Thomas said: "This isn't new as Sony did it with the GT5 Time Trail demo..."

Mind clarifying? The TT demo was one track with one car (with two setups).

In fact, to it's detriment it did not have any degradation and it felt rather unrealistic. This is because it was in a lap mode where there would be no tire degradation and dynamic tire temperatures. So in a way, I wish it was like what this patent outlines *LOL*. Gearbox damage would have been a plus too. :)

Take a look at that picture. It's showing off PS3's amazing "innovative feature of real-time weapon change!" Lol.

This concept works if you have your own console but if you share a console, like much of us do, this idea could fall flat on it's face. Example: your kid brother who can't afford the game might play the demo to death but you, who can afford the game, start fighting a dragon with a 3 inch sword. Where's the fun in that? Just do what Just Cause 2 has done Sony, which is you get to play within a large portion of the game but the the demo ends after a certain length of time. To me this just sounds like Sony trying to sell sizzle with very little steak.

I can't agree with some of you more and fail to see why Sony doesn't have the demo's kill switch according to date, by play hours/min, or by accomplishments (IE demo completed five times). I think the feature/mechanic shrink will end poorly for the developers if implemented and will reflect worse on the game they are trying to sell.

I agree with stone bytes...a demo ISNT the full game, so why download all those GB's to just try a game? Its stupid.
Alot of demos have everything unlocked right from the gate, so that anyone that picks up the game realizes that they dont have everything they had in the demo, so they hafta invest time to get those things, in turn, rewarding the player.
This just dosent sound right to me...it just sounds like dev's dont want to make demos anymore, and they would rather have the full game unlocked, and take things away? Thats kinda the opposite of gaming, isnt it?
If anything, they need to make more demos, not focusing on how to make a demo that dissolves over time.
Kinda like I wish they made a demo for Darksiders...but never did. THAT, to me, is more stupid then having a demo that takes away stuff.

A demo should be a small sample: one track and one car of a racing simulator, a small graphically impressive bot deathmatch level of a FPS, training/tutorial modes, and anything else that helps to form an opinion about the game and invest enough learning to want the full experience.