If you haven’t heard by now, Capcom doesn’t plan to make an effort to reach out further towards those interested in play testing their new product, specifically Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (MvC3). Even though a playable version may have been available at various gaming events, the fight-game developers feel that those events gave everyone a fair chance to try it out. In other words, tough luck if you missed it.
Christian Svensson of Capcom recently answered a few fan questions on the Capcom-Unity Forum about some of their titles currently in development. It was unavoidable that a question had been directed towards the lack of a demo for MvC3. Svensson (or Sven) had a quite a bit to say to help quell some of the fan rage.
“Again, several reasons: First, schedule. If you wanted a demo, you’d have had fewer characters, less polish or some other tradeoff in the full game because the game absolutely had to ship within this fiscal year (business reality).
“Demos take time to make, test and submit and they aren’t cheap which would mean something else would have to be cut or reduced to have time in the schedule and budget to do it. Secondly, historically our retail fighting game releases have not had demos and we don’t believe that has hurt sales or long term consumer feedback if the experience is good (and in MvC3, it is great).
“Lastly, we have made the game available to play at literally dozens of events around the world, so sampling opportunities have existed. It doesn’t mean everyone who would want to try it has had the opportunity, but I would venture a guess that literally hundreds of thousands have since we announced the title back in April.”
Sven brought up a few good points that I can agree with, but the lack of a demo service still stings my “try before you buy” belief. Granted, this arcade fighter has already garnered so much attention, its sales may very well survive without the need to tease its fans with a taste test.
Marvel vs. Capcom 3 will be hitting up retailers February 15, 2011 for North American territories, and then on the 18th in Europe.
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