>I can''t give out any specific sales figures because that would
>violate our confidentiality agreement with the developer
>(although if the developer wants to do so, he certainly can).

I was kind of interested to try this as well since I wasn''t sure how things would go. I won''t get specific, but I will say that I was generally pleased with the results from the first month of sales. Keep in mind that people buy most games off store shelves based on the presentation on the box. The proliferation of demos is still pretty new. It''s kind of hard to imagine not trying before buying but isn''t that the norm?

I think Steve is right, that demo''s have drawbacks as well as benefits. In Aargon''s case we''ve tried many many different level offerings since the first version went out almost 4 years ago and generally it''s probably very hard to offer the "perfect" set of levels for everyone. Some people are really naturally good at it and can solve easy levels quickly. So if you offer just easy levels then they might not buy thinking the game is too easy for them. Other people might get frustrated by hard levels right away and not buy for that reason. Nowdays we err on the side of easy, but I still see messages in newsgroups and so on where people say the game is easy. Aargon has many faults, but being to easy isn''t one of them :-)


- Steve V.
http://www.twilightgames.com