Speaking in a recent interview, Assassin's Creed producer Jade Raymond revealed that a playable demo of the game is not in the works. You may ask, why?
[blockquote2]No, we're not making a demo. This game is more like a sandbox style game where there's a lot of things, so it's not a linear mission where you can say, OK, we're making a demo and we're giving you this mission...
there's no way to say, OK, we're going to cut up this square of the city and give that to you in a demo because then you can't run around or do the gameplay. There's no way to really make a demo and i think that's the same reason game's like GTA don't have a demo...[/blockquote2]
OK, understood. But I do think there are ways to make a demo for this type of game. GTA may not have done it, but other "sandbox" games like Saint's Row managed with a demo. Not to mention all the previous GTA games were last-gen, who's to say IV won't have a demo?
Apart from the disappointing news of no demo, Jade however did say the game will offer over 40 hours of gameplay after factoring in all the core and side-missions.
New Assassin's Creed interview [GT]