Elden Ring is out now, the latest in the critically acclaimed but often esoteric Soulsborne genre.
It’s time for that to change, and platforms themselves should be leading the way.
More than most games, Elden Ring is likely to stymie some players, feeling impenetrable from the outset.
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Rental options have become fractured and inconsistent.
It is more difficult to share games, and downright impossible to share digital copies on consoles.
Creating one is time-consuming, putting extra strain on studios that are already facing a crunch.
It is, to be frank, an absolute mess, and an unnecessary one.
In an era of always-online consoles, there’s no reason developers should have to custom-build demos at all.
If piracy is a concern, this feature could be disabled if you attempt to play offline.
For shorter games, a trial may only last a half-hour.
Similarly, Steam already has a fairly generous return policy, which some players treat like a trial system.
Why not remove the artifice entirely?
Removing the difficulty of offering a demo-like service would likely increase participation among developers.
The inverse is also true: fewer gamers feel annoyed by wasting money on games theydon’tlove.
When Microsoft pitched the Xbox One, its always-online console in 2013, it was widely and rightly derided.
The proposed benefits may have been enticing, but they were outweighed by the downsides.
Technology has continued to advance, and we’ve essentially reached that same point organically.
The technology is already there to avoid this outcome forever.
We just need to tell platform-holders to start using it.
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