I don't believe there's a Bioshock Infinite demo, and I don't think there will be. In fact, I think right now we are seeing a sudden change in the industry. 2013 will be the year that all games stopped having demos.

(When I say all games, I mean, the triple-A titles like Bioshock Infinite where you buy a game on a disc and play that game. I don't mean games that do the free-to-play model with monetization via microtransactions within the game.)

The reason game demos will stop this year is because of this single youtube video. The relevant section starts around ten minutes into the presentation:



I find this very interesting because it turns the industry on its head. It was previously assumed to be common sense that you could sell more games by releasing a playable demo. The shareware game industry was build on that model, and it's even hard-coded into the Xbox (you can't release an Xbox Live Arcade title without a playable demo, it's hard-coded into the UI). It's amazing that it took this long before anyone actually looked at statistics on it.

Wow, that's pretty incredible! I guess I can understand that reasoning. It makes sense. Didn't they do a study that found only 20% of people playing a game will ever see the ending? I wonder what the opposite is. What percentage will only see the beginning? If there's a demo, that latter percentage will probably be covered enough.

BTW, I found it really annoying that the video was produced in a way that cut the camera away from his line chart just before revealing what the top two lines were. I know charts can be boring, but it reduces the impact he's intending...