Pearl Abyss has shared new results for Crimson Desert‘s cloud gaming demo on Twitch. In interviews with GamesBeat’s Alexander Lee, the studio and Amazon Web Services reported that people play for about five and a half minutes on average. The demo has also consistently ranked among the top one or two trackable links sending visitors to the game’s Steam page.
The demo launched on August 31st and gives you about 20 minutes with Crimson Desert through Amazon GameLift Streams. Amazon is also looking at bringing these playable demos beyond Twitch.
People Play the Demo for More Than Five Minutes
More than half of those who try the demo continue playing past five minutes. Pearl Abyss public relations and marketing director Will Powers compared that with someone skipping a regular ad after three seconds.
The Steam referral ranking counts visits to the game’s page, not purchases. Around 60 to 70 percent of people trying the demo are from the Americas, according to the companies’ figures.
Pearl Abyss also has a security reason for offering a cloud gaming demo. Powers said the studio doesn’t want to distribute a downloadable demo that someone could reverse-engineer. With GameLift Streams, it can offer a playable preview without sending out the game code. The demo reportedly starts in under three seconds.
Amazon Plans to Bring Instant Play Demos Beyond Twitch
Amazon calls these browser-based experiences Instant Play Demos. Twitch is their first home, but AWS global head of games industry business development Shayan Sanyal said Amazon wants to bring them to other Amazon properties and potentially outside partners. Sanyal described the project as still being in the experimental stages.
AWS had already discussed expanding Instant Play Demos beyond Twitch in September. The longer-term goal goes further, with outside companies potentially hosting the demos under their own branding. Amazon hasn’t named specific partners or said when that could happen.
Crimson Desert is one of five games that have received an Instant Play Demo on Twitch. The others are REANIMAL, Palworld, Dragon Age: The Veilguard and World of Tanks: HEAT. We covered an early REANIMAL test on Cloud Dosage in May, when Amazon was still experimenting with the format.
As of November 2nd, Crimson Desert’s demo was still available on Twitch. Powers said Pearl Abyss has no plans to remove it in the foreseeable future. If you’re curious about the game, you can try part of it in your browser before deciding whether to visit Steam.
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