Recent data out of the MI6 video game conference appears to show that demos may actually hurt sales of games across the board.

Of course, the data itself is slightly misleading. After all, what major game release gets a demo and not a trailer?

Potentially deceptive evidence aside, plenty of developers have passed on a demo release recently, for reasons ranging from cost of production to unrepresentative gameplay. What would happen if publishers began to cut down even more on demos? Would that be a good thing--from either the consumer standpoint, or that of the industry?

Fellow Shacknews editor Aaron Linde and I have two very different opinions on the matter, and thus, we were forced to do combat.

Nick Breckon: Publishers ignoring the importance of demos would be a terrible mistake.

Aaron Linde: You are so wrong.

Nick Breckon: No, you are.

Listen Aaron, I can count on six hands the number of games that I've bought based on a good demo. This isn't some illusory phenomenon that doesn't exist, like PC piracy. Demos work.

If the industry were to generally phase out demos, it would be a slap in the face--not in a nostalgic sense, but purely from the standpoint of a consumer.

If you haven't noticed, a game is $60 these days--$60 goddamned dollars. This isn't a movie, where a decent trailer is enough to warrant a $10 investment. We're talking 60 trips to the dollar store here. That's flushing a lot of porcelain ducks down the drain without ever getting your hands on the thing ahead of time.

Bookstores allow you to demo printed material. Music stores allow you to play bits of tracks at your leisure. For the gaming industry to strong-arm consumers into making blind purchases seems counter-productive to me. Are they trying to encourage rentals or resales? Are they looking to prop up piracy even more? How does that help their business?

Of course you can make the argument that great games don't need demos to sell, and terrible games are hurt by them. This ignores the fact that most games released today don't fall into either of those extreme categories.

I know what you're going to say. I know you're going to be all, "But Nick, what about that Skate demo you played 56 times? Ever buy that game, Nick? Ever give EA any cash for that?"

No, I never did. That is a fine example of a game that just barely didn't warrant a purchase for me. But the thing is, I certainly wasn't going to buy it without having played the demo, either. EA loses nothing in such a situation.

You can take my flight sims, but you can never take my demos.

Aaron Linde: Nick, I hate you so much. So, so much.

You know what the best use of a demo is? Satisfying my unbridled desire for a work in progress in which I've already invested a great deal of interest. The last demo that I played was for BioShock, a game I was already hung up on purchasing, and had already done a fair bit of research on.

I'm not going to suggest that demos aren't useful, because they are. They avail more options to the consumer and make decisions easier in an industry where a $60 mistake can burn like a motherfucker. I know all too well--I purchased Assassin's Creed, after all. But industry-wide delirium notwithstanding, there's so much coverage and so much information out there that you have to make a significant effort to buy a game knowing virtually nothing about it.