Fatal Inertia Comments by Rob Fahey

Isn't this a PS3 Exclusive? o_O

I thought the PS3 version had been abandoned because of all those unreal engine problems a few months back? As well as the bad XBL demo, the trailer/footage originally available on the PSN looked very dire: scenery exploding in half a dozen huge rectangular 2D sheets went out with the PS1.

Still reckon it will be pwned by WipEout HD. Especially for the price...

@speedjack and allen

Demos are a strange beast. Often as not the dev won't get to choose what goes in. That descision is often made by the publisher.

Also, its worth bearing in mind that a demo is almost always created before the game is actually finished. In light of that it is surely to be expected that some aspects may still be a bit ropey. I totally agree that a demo is a marketing tool, but it differs fundamentally from a normal advert in that it is hands on.

A coffee advert doesn't actually depend on the coffee tasting nice at the time the advert is made, it just has to taste nice by the time it turns up on the shop shelves. Most ad campaigns that are ran in the months before a product hits the shelves don't actually depend on the product itself being in any way complete.

Now car sales rooms will allow customers to test drive vehicles, which is essentially a demo, except they wouldn't dream of letting anyone do that until the car production process was actually complete. Imagine sending out a potential customer in a car that was still awaiting final tweaks. "It drove like shite and gobbled up fuel" says Mr/Ms test driver. "Well too right" says car manufacturer, "it wasn't finished".

Sooo, the point I am getting to. There are a few devs who have in recent times started releasing demos after the final product has actually been completed and released. I for one think this is a great thing for several reasons.

1. The main reason (with my dev hat on) is that it allows the dev team to wortk on the product instead of pouring manhours into making a demo. Schedules rarely include demo building from the sttart, so those manhours have to come from somewhere. Either they come from the pool assigned to making the actual product, or they come from the teams personal lives. Neither is acceptable in my book.

2. The second reason (most important if I was wearing my gamer hat) is that the demo is far more likely to represent the actual game if it is created after the development of that game has been completed. So we as gamers get a fair representation of the game we are thinking of buying, which works in our favour as we don't dismiss some gem of gaming fun just because a poor demo misrepresented the title to us.

We get very hung up on demos coming out way in advance of the title release date. I understand this - I get enthusiastic about certain games and I want titbits as much as the next gamer. But its not like we can actually act on the demo until the game is released, not if we accept that the purpose of the demo is to promote the game to us and secure a sale (rather than just giving us some gaming time for free, which is nice but not really why the demo in question was created).

Anyway, various ramblings from me about demos end here.

I think the PS3-version is better than the Xbox360-version.

At the PS3-version there are a lot of innovations...