LaBounti
Eagle-incubs, have you read any of the new post about the new BMW demo. seems everyone wants it(guess that makes them all dumb). Anyway lots of games have come out with demo months before and after its release. Movies and video games are so not the same. Gran Turismo 2's NA demo came out a few months before the full game and lots of people were all over it. Not everyone feels the same as you and seeing the first 40mins of a movie is dumb, not playing a demo of a game.
I mentioned the BMW demo in my post so I'll go out on a limb and say I was aware of it and it's limited availability. I've looked at Prologue in game stores and gone "$60 for a demo? Yeah right". I played Prologue for 3 minutes at EB, won a race around Tskuba or some other Japanese circuit whose name I can't yet spell, and was over it pretty fast. I don't get the fascination with demos - people are already slaughtering much of the surprise GT4 might have offered with thousands of images and movies, it's not like North America is completely in the dark for anything and everything GT4 related. Many people have already imported Prologue because they're so dedicated. Some people are just obsessive - if it's remotely GT related, they have to own it, regardless of whether it's actually worth owning. Look at the people who came out and complained that their
free Toyota demo only let them choose from two cars and two tracks, they wanted a bigger experience. Any demo that gets released will be sub par compared to Prologue from most respects, and will thus receive criticism for not being better, but to better it, PD is going to basically have to release the E3 version in terms of cars and perhaps with more tracks - so people get further confused over just what GT4 is having seen no less than 2 other versions with "Gran Turismo 4" in the name before the real one even gets here, spend money on products that are only intended as demos, get pissed off, don't buy the real thing, and PD loses money. Don't believe it'll happen? Go ask a market researcher if putting words onto the end of a title makes people think it's a newer version. If you asked the average person, who has no idea what 'Prologue' means, to choose between Gran Turismo 4 and Gran Turismo 4 Prologue or Gran Turismo 4 Trial Edition (theoretical title), they'll pick the longer one, in the same way they'd pick "Matrix: Special Edition" over just plain vanilla "Matrix", and the same way people pick the longest answer on multiple choice tests when they have no clue.
Oh and movies and video games are so not the same? o_O All I can say is Metal Gear Solid. It's all entertainment. It's like watching the first 40 minutes of a F1 race and having to wait 3 months for the finish of the race, like reading the first 50 pages of a book and having to wait 3 months for the conclusion to be added. The people who have the patience and interest to wait for the game are going to do so with or without a demo, the people with no attention span whatsoever aren't going to be suckered in enough to wait 3 whole months for a full title. If NA is going to get some sort of respectable demo, it won't happen until shortly before release and will probably wind up being some compilation of the various manufacturer demos that have been produced and released, and it'll be free on some magazine cover disc.
I gather they got the idea that people were geating the broshures just for the demo.
... the real version will be released this november on DVD in a box set... just like fellowship and two towers.