SEGA have sent through the following announcement from Rebellion, the developer of Aliens vs Predator, the recent demo of which caused some grief for many gamers who had problems getting into an online game.

Unprecedented demand for Aliens vs Predator following the release of the cross-platform demo yesterday morning brought to light matchmaking issues on the PC platform resulting in players having to wait to join games, or even not find games at all.

We’re pleased to say later in the day the issue was corrected and a small patch to the PC executable next time you launch it from Steam will have you finding and playing games using Quick Match as it was intended.

While this issue did not affect the Xbox 360, we are with SEGA’s assistance investigating reports of a similar nature on the PlayStation 3 and working flat out on a solution.

The full game features the ability to browse for and create games but for the purposes of simplicity the demo was limited to matchmaking, alongside the ability to set up groups with friends which mitigated yesterday’s issues for many.

We’re really sorry that this issue tainted a day in which we saw many people get hands on with AvP for the first time and we’re hugely gratified by the positive feedback to the game.

While it's good to see they've acknowledged the problem and (hopefully?) provided a resolution, it might be too little, too late - many gamers have indicated that they've canceled their pre-orders based on the poor multiplayer performance of the demo, which was especially disappointing given that the game was always said to have dedicated server support.

Dedicated servers aren't a solution to everything, but when you're releasing a demo for your multiplayer game - and you've touted dedicated servers as being a feature - it seems like it would be madness not to include that functionality in the demo. If you haven't tried the demo yet, maybe give it a go now that this fix is in and check it out.

A new trailer has also been released to showcase the gameplay of the Colonial Marines - check it out below:

Aliens vs Predator is due February 18 2010 for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

we’re hugely gratified by the positive feedback to the game.

What positive feedback? The vast majority of feedback I've seen is rather negative...

that marine gameplay trailer didn't wow me at all

This wasn't even the major issue with the demo. Gameplay sucked. The boring choice of MP mode to come with the demo didn't help.

that marine gameplay trailer was terrible. seems a marine can run backwards quicker than an alien can run forwards. Aliens seemed to like running along the ground for some reason, but then again they seemed really confused about the whole thing & didn't really bother to attack the lone marine much at all.
looked pretty damn bad to me.

i had some issues on the first night but it seemed to be better yesterday when i gave it a bash.

we’re hugely gratified by the positive feedback from xbox users.

Fixed.

^^ win

His right though, and that's what I'm doing. When they tout that their MP is going to be over awesome and make you go goo goo ga, and yet it doesn't when they "showcase" a part of it? Hit that cancel button.

Also, usually when a "DEMO" is released, it is a part of the current, up-to-date code and gameplay. Not 6 weeks ago code that we decided to stick in cause we didn't want anyone to know that we hadn't done anything else since. Even BFBC2's beta has better MP then this piece of shit

And also, is that trailer depicting gameplay for the Xbox 360?

Yeah, I remember playing the Hellgate "beta" and being told that it was beta & would obviously be super-mega-better in the release code. Never gonna get bitten by that kind of thing again, and this was a demo, not a beta.
meh.

Even after a shakey demo I'm still looking at getting this game for PC

Looks like I'll be the only one though :(

Yep that Demo is all console , looks like i will be cancelling my pre order.

I'm certainly looking forward to it, I get the feeling there designing it as a Single Player game first then adding multi later. From the other trailers I'd say there focusing on scripting for all the single player missions and leaving multi player for later. When you get right down to it MP functionality can be easily patched later where as single player is much less likley to be. Although I'd prefer it if more companies took Blizzards philosophy of it's ready when it's ready and allowing comunity feadback during development.

Not 6 weeks ago code that we decided to stick in cause we didn't want anyone to know that we hadn't done anything else since.

Realistically, at this point in its development, I wouldn't imagine there'd be a huge difference between code from now and code from 6 weeks ago, just maybe some bug fixes and optimisations would be about it.

Someone in another thread said the demo code was 10 months old though? If thats true, then thats pretty fucked up.

Fuck, if that is true, 10 months is just stupid. Also, @shadowdanc3r, Blizzard are able to do the "when it's ready we'll release it" because they own the IP and have their own funding. Most game companies get 1-2 years to make a game because investors want products and they want them quick. Look what happened to AoC, the investors couldn't wait any longer and wanted some form of profit, so they told Funcom to get their shit together and plop it out.

so they told Funcom to get their shit together and plop it out

This is an appropriate analogy for the turd that Age of Conan was.

Well at least they released a demo, seems to be much more popular these days to simply throw in a bunch of pre-order bonuses to entice people to buy up early then it is to offer them a look at the game play.

They will learn from this and next time just give pre-orders a bonus weapon or a pretty new skin for a character instead of putting themselves at risk of people finding out their game is shit before they make bucket loads of cash from it.