14 DAY TRIAL // Nintendo has announced that it plans to begin offering demos for a selected few titles distributed via the WiiWare service, which brings downloadable titles to those using the Wii. The idea is that if more people can get a taste of the experience offered by those games, then more of them will pay up and get the full version. The demo program will apparently begin later during the month of November and there's a chance that Japanese players will get the demos ahead of those in the West.
Satoru Iwata, Chief Executive Officer and president of Nintendo, has told investors that most of the customers who access the WiiWare and the DSiWare services already know exactly what they want to play and buy.
This means that they enter the virtual stores, make their transactions and then exit, without browsing other games and without learning more of the other offerings that Nintendo has prepared. The offering of demos could actually bring more traffic to both WiiWare and DSiWare, thus more publicity to the titles launched.
Gamasutra is estimating that those titles released on the Xbox Live Arcade tend to get, on average, between 50,000 and 100,000 sales, while those released on the PlayStation Network get, also on average, from 35 to 75,000 units sold.
The contrast with WiiWare is clear, with average releases on the Nintendo service topping out at 20,000 copies sold. Microsoft and Sony both employ more publicity for their downloadable titles, advertising them on the front page of the interface, which Nintendo does not do at the moment. If the idea of offering WiiWare demos is successful, the company might implement more ads for them and could also get more games released on the service every week.