.... & Arcen games is having insane financial problems as a result (I.E. nearing bankruptcy).

Which leads to...

Certainly, the amount of demos available on consoles are significant and I always try the game out on the PS3 before purchasing the game on PC. A little before hand research on the steam forums (or the internet) to see if the PC version is poor in optimization, plus a quick look at sys requirements and my mind is made up if the game can be purchased confidently.

I think there has always been plenty of demos, it's just that the publishers now release them on the consoles. Obviously this is a spanner in the works for the OP,since he is a PC only player.

for smaller companies yes, then, but not bigger ones.

The nice thing about game demos is that you discover games that you never would have given the time of day under most circumstances. A fit of boredom, a downloaded demo and you might end up purchasing a hidden gem.

The bigger the game, the more money that is put into it. So I'm inclined to disagree.

Talk about jumping to conclusions.

No, the reason why Arcen ran low on money is that Tidalis didn't sell, through a combination of jumping into a crowded market without looking and crappy promotion. Nothing to do with demos. If it was something to do with demos, they would been broke long before they released Zeneith Remnant (and its demo).

It doesn't really take that much time to make a demo, unless you've programmed it in the crappiest way possible.

This, do these asshats that run these companies even know how shareware works or what is it?

Just release a small portion of your game highlighting the best moments and bam - you are done

Of course I understand that for some games doing a demo is close to impossible (Fallout 3, open world games, etc) but you get the idea

When a publisher/developer doesn't release or doesn't care about a demo to me that basically is saying: "I want you to buy this game just based on this trailer or site/mag preview"

Dark messiah of might and magic had a demo made specifically for the game to highlight the new gameplay mechanics and to showoff the tech - That is the best way to do a demo and leave a good impression

It's not always that easy, especially if the team is small and running in tight shift. All the people needed to create a seperate demo might be needed elsewhere. And game making is more and more project oriented, so as soon as your own slice of the work is done, you move into next, especially with the big companies.

The core problem is in the current business model the companies create games: it leaves very little time to do demos, as all the time is needed to make the actual game.

The problem with Shareware is, that not many games work in the style of Doom or Wolfenstein these days. In those game you still got a very specific amount of levels on a specific episode. If original Doom would be made today, there wouldn't be seperate levels, they'd all be connected.

True, nothing would actually stop the companies make a demo out of it and just close the exits. But the problem might lay in the corporate big wigs, who don't see a profit in demos, they see only the expense.

Again, companies are greedy and holding back demos for PC games out of greed, and with a slightly bigger staff and a bit of expense they could pull demos out of their ass every time a game is released but again they won't because they're greedy SOBs.....we can all agree on this much, yes?

:)