Today, back-to-back announcements concerning two of gaming’s biggest franchises will be leaving us all in suspense a bit longer. Epic and Bethesda have both claimed that their tentpole releases, Gears of War 2 and Fallout 3 respectively, will not feature playable demos.

When asked about Epic’s decision to forego a demo, associate producer Tanya Jessen claimed that developing a demo takes too much focus away from the actual game’s development, and that with only a two-year turnaround between games, there simply isn’t time to produce something worthwhile. She also reminded naysayers that the original Gears of War didn’t have a demo, and things seemed to turn out okay for that one.

Bethesda’s reasoning behind the lack of a demo is slightly different, yet still valid. Bethesda’s Pete Hines explains that, "When you build it as one thing, there’s no way to portion off a section and have it stand on its own without putting the whole game in the demo, which we’re just not going to do." So Bethesda is basically worried that giving gamers even a taste of the game will ruin the whole experience. Oh well, it’s their ball, so they get to make the rules.

Stay tuned to TGR to get our thoughts on the games as more info becomes available. Since there won’t be a demo, you’ll need someone to tell you if these high-profile, surefire hits are any good or not...