God of War III Demo?! Sweet! Not.

Sources have reported that the demo for God of War III (as seen at E3) will be included with the remastered God of War Collection (which is the first two games). What does this mean? You get to pay to try out a demo by buying two games you probably already have. The demo would be included as a redeem code off PSN. Read moar for moar details.

Blu-ray remastered logo of the first two God of War games.

Essentially, the first and second God of War games are being released on PS3's Blu-ray disk, with some changes. It's got remastered visuals (not crappy Star Wars trilogy remastered, though), trophy support, and apparently more changes in the game. It's a great purchase for those who haven't jumped into the series yet and are prepping for God of War III, but an awful release for just about everyone else who has played through both games.

For those regular gamers who have the games, it's not really worth it. However, Sony has the go-ahead to rape your wallets once more because of the neutering your PS3's compatibilities (unless you were one to purchase launch PS3s like me, in which case, never mind).

I remind you that the backwards compatibility removal was all in good reason, to lower prices.

On top of that, Sony tries to compensate for its failure to give buy value to two dated games by allowing you to download the God of War III demo. The terrible thing about this is, it's the only way to be able to test the game out. So you have to pay for games you most likely own to play a small fraction of a new game that you don't own.

Hey, it sure beats paying extra for a game to try it out before you get it.

All in all, I think it's stupid way to market the two games, as well as the new one. Using that as incentive is just dumb. Why not give the demo to the public? For free? It's cheating people out of money.

Bitmobbers! What do you think of this extra bonus (if you can call it that) for buying the collection?

Tags: God of War, sony, PlayStation, Collections, marketing, failure, Blu-ray, Legal Issues

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Jon Cole

September 29, 2009

[quote]It may also end up being a total gyp, like a 5 second demo, or something.[/quote] To be fair, I think I remember someone saying that it's the E3 build of the demo.

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Kevin Xing

Oh yeah, whoops, looks like I fail at reading details. Fixed.

Disregard that, I suck. The blogging editor is messing up right now. I also dunno why we can't edit our comments... To clear this up manually, it was said to be the E3 demo. What really sucks is that I don't even pay attention to what I write myself, because the first paragraph says it's the one seen at E3. It's the E3 build, people, and not a 5 second gyp.

Rob Savillo

I'm confused -- is the GoW3 demo on the collection disc, or will purchasers of the collection be given a redeem code to get the demo on PSN? I don't understand all the rage here, and I'm sure that after a specified time the GoW3 demo will be available for anyone to download for free from PSN. And I think it's a bit cheap to rag on Sony for "neutering" the PS3. After all the cries to lower the price, Sony did so by removing the components (PS2 hardware) responsible for backwards compatibility. The launch systems essentially had a PS2 built inside of them, and I imagine it was the easiest feature to drop that would lower the price most significantly.

It's a redeem code for PSN. My rage is somewhat voiced at the fact that there is no information of GoW3's demo being released later. So far, the only way of getting the demo, is by getting games that I already purchased before. Yeah, I guess the anger surrounding the PS3's lack of compatibility is because of how consumers didn't want to lose the compatibility but at the same time wanted the price lowered. I suppose Sony's only way to slash the price was to slash the backwards compatible components (which was basically PS2 parts in the PS3) to the Playstation 3. I just negatively put that because I thought that the price slashing could have been dealt with a lot more effectively.

I think the reason that a lot of people are bothered by exclusive (maybe -timed) demos is that they don't serve the most apparent purpose of a demo. Ideally, a demo would be released far enough out that it can build excitement for a game and give gamers a chance to see if the game is for them. Exclusive demos basically reduce us back to the 90's, when a demo disk or shareware became available months after a game's release when they're picking the bottom of a barrel.

I see, thanks for clarifying. This is likely just a promotional stunt to move copies of the collection, and I'll also bet that at some point before March of 2010 there will be a free GoW3 demo on PSN for everyone. Just be patient if you don't want to buy the collection.

Jay Henningsen

I'm not sure why updating the graphics and adding new features qualifies as an "awful release." What would constitute a good release of these games on the PS3?

Jason Wilson

I may check these out; I didn't play either God of War game (as a mostly PC gamer/RPG player, God of War didn't interest me as much as other games).

[quote]I'm not sure why updating the graphics and adding new features qualifies as an "awful release." What would constitute a good release of these games on the PS3?[/quote] I agree with you. Just looking at Amazon.com right now, it looks like they're offering preorders at $37 ($40 regular retail). Since both of the original games are greatest hits, it's unlikely that you'd be able to find new copies of those games for less than a combined $40. So as far as content is concerned, the price comparison is one-to-one.