"With a game of this size and complexity, it's really hard to do a demo that represents the game"
Dude, customers know that. If your demo accurately conveys a sense of what the entire game will be like, than you've made a very simple and repetitive game.
That's not the point of a demo. First, we want to know that the game will perform adequately on our particular system; configuration specific performance bugs and crashes are still a huge concern. And second, it gives at least a sense of the quality of one small section of the game. We also want to see how the game controls, which is absolutely critical with any game where the developer admits that consoles are the lead platform.
Ultimately, if you have an impressive game, it can only be helped by a demo. Avoiding that is always suspicious, and a good reason to hold back on preordering and just wait for reviews.
This comment was edited on Jul 14, 2011, 17:26.