No demo planned for Prince of Persia

Too many "awful" demos says developer

14 July 2008 17:29 GMT / By Verity Burns

It seems Prince of Persia fans will just have to go the distance and wait for the franchise's newest chapter to be released, as the game's producer confirms there are no plans to release a demo.

Following in the footsteps of the Far Cry 2 team who also decided against a consumer demo, POP producer Ben Mattes said it was unnecessary.

"Doing demos of open-world games is a technical challenge; plus we're not convinced we need to," he said.

"It's a brand that has some history, some built-in fan-base and we can benefit a little bit from that. Whether you like Sands of Time, Warrior Within or Two Thrones, chances are you're going to love this game because there are elements of all of those in it."

Mattes also noted that a demo can often do more harm than good to a game.

"There's just so many awful demos," he added. "Let's face it, releasing a demo when you also have an E3 version to put together, and your beta etc... It's not the kind of thing that's going to allow you to put together a really polished demo.

"There's a reality of production we have to live with which means if we did put together a demo there's a potential that it wouldn't be at the level we want it to be. Then what are you doing? You're doing your game a disservice by putting it in players' hands before it's ready. Nobody wants that."

Well, when you put it like that...

The game is due out on PS3, Xbox 360 and PC around Christmas, not forgetting the separate DS game being released alongside it.

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