You have two categories of games: the one that are great for launch and which the price decrease fast, and the one that stay in time but that sell less at start. I think it is linked to the degree of importance of the multiplayer part in the game. For exemple: on the charts of Valve, Counter-Strike source (2004) is ahead Portal 2 (2011) at the moment. Counter-Strike (2000) is a lot before Portal 1 (2007) which cost even less.

There is no demo for these games as well in fact. Because a long term seller is based on the fact that the interest of the game is also on long term. It is true that many people can enjoy TM in the first hour, but the average time of play of games like United is ten times more than short term games. So, we rely on word of mouth a lot at the moment. Maybe we will have a way to get more people in by making more people test, but I have other scheme than a demo. We did many demo in the past, and maybe things have changed a little in that perspective. But your question was about long term. To put simply, I think we would make more sells short term with a demo, but that there are more ways to bring people in by not having a demo that makes you have a wrong idea of the full potential of the game. Also, if our systems are still being improved month after month, maybe a demo would be better later.

About demo, there is already something about the evolution of the way of making games. The more I see studios to create "free-to-play" games, where you have most of the content for free, but some items to be paid, I feel that their job is likely to change from game makers to item sellers a little. I feel that if our job is to make games, then it is good to sell what we do. If you give two hours of fun with a demo, it is less normal to sell the full game after at the same price somehow, since they arlready "used it" For TrackMania, it is even more difficult since you can spend 20 hours on a same track to try to improve your time (I did it and I like it ^_^) We even received poetry from players that did not wanted us to close the demo servers, years after the release, since their clan where enjoying it so much.

So, we want to sell the game at the same price as possible for everybody in time and space (there is already some little price distortion because of countries) for the real job we are doing is for me a real long term strategy. I feel it more fair.