Judging from the fact that New Super Mario Bros. Wii is, by all accounts, already going to be condescendingly juvenile when it comes to its stage designs, and also taking into consideration the trajectory of electronic gaming during the past decade, chances are good that Demo Play's place in gaming's history will not be to establish any kind of return to form. Instead, it will probably be remembered as yet another milestone on the long road of the degradation of traditional video game ideals, much like continuing, increasing the frequency of 1-ups, quick-saving, simplifying stage layouts, etc., have done in the past. Going well past merely piss-easy games, this development could very well bring us to the point where not including the ability to immediately shift to the A.I. "win button" could spell commercial suicide for a new title. This is when that new generation of gamers, the ones who will grow up, become designers themselves, and complete the downward spiral so that pop gaming will finally be analogous to pop music (if you think this is a compliment you are not thinking), will ask their parents how they ever put up with those rock hard games like Super Mario Sunshine and Densetsu no Starfi. Today's breed of New Games Journalism-loving "games easy enough to be beaten with one hand so I can stroke my chin with the other about its deeply deep post-meta-semiology" hipsters could very well be viewed as... hardened veterans, like how us mortals look at the players in those score-attack DVDs of 2D shooting games.
