{"id":115931,"date":"2020-07-27T22:41:00","date_gmt":"2020-07-27T22:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/366918"},"modified":"2020-07-27T22:41:00","modified_gmt":"2020-07-27T22:41:00","slug":"analysis-xbox-demo-fest-blasts-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2020\/07\/27\/analysis-xbox-demo-fest-blasts-off\/","title":{"rendered":"Analysis: Xbox Demo Fest blasts off"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra\u0092s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company. <\/small><\/i><\/strong> <\/p>\n

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[Hi, I\u2019m \u2018how people find your game\u2019 expert Simon Carless<\/a>, and you\u2019re reading the Game Discoverability Now! newsletter<\/a>, which you can subscribe to now<\/a><\/strong>, a regular look at how people discover and buy video games in the 2020s.]<\/em><\/p>\n

Welcome to the latest \u2018GameDiscoverabilityLand\u2019 round-up, where-in I have a few hundred words to recap everything that happened this week. And I inevitably fail, at least on the brevity side of things.<\/p>\n

Before we get started, thanks for the amazing response on the Steam reviews\/sales ratio survey<\/a>. You\u2019ve still got \u2018til Friday if you want to submit. But we have 220 (!!) responses so far, so it\u2019s going to be a really robust data set. Anyhow\u2026 onward!<\/p>\n

Xbox Summer Demo Fest – in full effect!<\/h2>\n
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The Summer Games Fest Demo Event is now live on Xbox One! From July 21 to July 27, play more than 70 exciting demos of upcoming games. Details here: https:\/\/t.co\/Dve2t4LFxg<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Xbox Wire (@XboxWire) July 21, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So the Xbox One\u2019s pre-release demo event is currently running, and hopefully some of you have checked it out. There\u2019s around 60 demos available right now (almost all from indie devs or smaller publishers, with exceptions like Destroy All Humans!)<\/p>\n

Thought I\u2019d document where it\u2019s being showcased on the console, starting with the Store tab on the Xbox dashboard (even before you open the Store!)<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

When you go into the Store app itself, you\u2019ll see it has an entire category to itself, which is decent billing:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Finally, here\u2019s what the Game Fest \u2018show all page\u2019 looks like – it actually runs alphabetically, with about 12 leftover \u2018second set of alphabetical\u2019 games at the bottom of the page, haha:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Since you can look at how many reviews (in the U.S. Xbox store) each game has, I thought I\u2019d briefly document and link to the Top 5 demos:<\/p>\n

1. 9 Monkeys Of Shaolin<\/a> (is alphabetically first, so that may help downloads.)
2. Skatebird<\/a>
3. Destroy All Humans!<\/a>
4. Cris Tales<\/a> (this game is visually gorgeous!)
5. Haven<\/a><\/p>\n

If you go by reviews, it looks like the most-played demos have around 10x the plays of the least-played ones so far. So plenty of range in there, for sure. There\u2019s also this chart across all game demos on the Microsoft Store<\/a>, which has different results, so YMMV.<\/p>\n

Anyhow, Xbox Summerfest is a really nice way to dip into games you might otherwise not have heard of. I played (and enjoyed) Dandy Ace<\/a>, for example, which I didn\u2019t know existed before.<\/p>\n

So I can\u2019t believe it\u2019s anything but positive – albeit mildly positive, perhaps – for both players and devs. If you\u2019re in it, tell me what you think of the results. And let\u2019s have it happen once a year for all consoles! *snaps fingers*<\/em><\/p>\n

Steam Summer Festival – the full results!<\/h2>\n

So, big shout-out to Chris Zukowski for doing the ultimate write-up of Steam Summer Festival\u2019s results<\/a>, following my slightly more anecdotal comments on the demo showcase a few roundups ago.<\/p>\n

Definitely click through<\/a> for the full thing, but the topline appears to be, for those demos that participated: \u201cAverage number of wishlists [added]: 3218; Median number of wishlists [added]: 500; Most wishlists earned by a single game: 41096 (The Riftbreaker<\/a>); Fewest wishlists earned by a single game: 40.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

One graph I thought particularly relevant – even beyond the Summer Festival – was Chris\u2019 calculation of median wishlists additions per genre for surveyed games:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

This data maps fairly well to the kind of VERY broad game facets that I would recommend people make for Steam – to be commercially successful as a small\/medium sized game.<\/p>\n

(It\u2019s way more complex than this, of course. And getting deeper into tag comparisons would surface a lot more detail. But it\u2019s a super-useful snapshot of where perceived interest and depth is.)<\/p>\n

Other Goodness\u2026<\/h2>\n

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Lawks-a-lordy, we\u2019re most of the way through the newsletter already, and there\u2019s still a hefty chunk of content to talk about. Here\u2019s the best of the rest, in no particular order:<\/p>\n