to developers: how to boost sales

[Pizzicato]

CWL has a really good point. The kids that are ripping into him clearly aren't thinking things through.

I work at a major games company, surrounded by people that really know their shit and play pretty much every demo that gets released onto the Xbox marketplace and PSN. Over the past couple of weeks a number of people have asked my what I've been playing and, amongst others, I've been waxing lyrical about the "Il-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey" demo.

No one on the team has played it.

No one.

Aside from the large number of people that aren't interested in flying games or simulations, the standard response I've received is some variation of "Yeah, I saw that on the Xbox marketplace but thought 'What a weird aircraft to base a game around' and didn't bother downloading it".

When I pointed out that you actually get to fly a whole bunch of much more commonly known aircraft, their interest levels immediately increased. If you take this very small sample of the gaming community and extrapolate outwards, you begin to see the overall effect.

It's easy to cretinously spout gems like "LMAO" or "P51: U.S.A! U.S.A! F%$K YEAR!" or "Oh noes! Yuz gots P-51s in my Il-2s" but takes a little more thought and inquiry to sit back and objectively look at how marketing affects a game's sales.