Dear EA:

I'm writing to give you a clue.  I don't know why I'm being so generous, as I generally hate your company.  In my mind, it is everything evil about Wal-Mart and Hollywood wrapped up into a single package.  On the one hand, you work your developers like slave labor while swooping in to buy up every licensed content and/or independent developer that you can milk, and then on the other hand, you churn out schlock on a weekly basis because you know the lowest common denominator will buy it.  To put it succinctly, you suck.

In your latest example of suckage, your downloadable demo of Fight Night Round 3 for Xbox 360 on the Xbox Live Marketplace is so frustrating to play, I don't see how you can even dream you'll garner any sales from the demo.  First, let's talk about the music.  Not every video gamer likes rap, but I can tolerate certain varieties of it in small dosages.  That said, I have no idea what that garbage is you're playing on the title screen, but in terms of enjoyable music, I rank it somewhere between Yoko Ono and fingernails on a chalkboard.  Not necessarily the first impression you want to make on prospective buyers of your product.

Now that I've got that off my chest, let's talk about controls.  Why do you offer 6 different control schemes without a way for the user to differentiate between them?  "Config 3" and "Config 6" without a controller map to look at makes it hard to make an educated choice in controller configurations.  So I have to play "guess that control scheme" without knowing what the controls are until you show me the loading screen.  I'll give you points for having the controller map on the loading screen.  Now if you'd just give me the option of starting the fight when I'm ready, instead of starting the fight as soon as it's done loading (which takes about 3 seconds).  Once the fight starts, I have no way of looking at my controller scheme again.  Thanks.

Finally, rather than just throw me into a fight, how about a brief tutorial so I understand what I'm doing?  It took me 4 bouts to realize that I even could block, much less how.

Overall, your demo seems pretty typical for EA:  Lots of pretty graphics, frustrating gameplay, and least-common-denominator styling.  I think I'll take a pass on buying this one.