After a few previous opportunities, the demo for the upcoming Bayonetta will be available to everyone in western territories with next week's console store updates. No changes have been mentioned from the demos previously made available.

The last two times the Bayonetta demo was made available users had to jump through a few hoops to get it. In the beginning of October prior to the game's October 30th release, the demo was made available on Xbox Live and Playstation Network in their Japanese regions. Many western users got the demo with Japanese accounts and you still can if you don't want to wait another week.

The first official availability of the Bayonetta demo in the west was with a promotion that offered the chance to win the demo on Xbox Live to subscribers to Sega's newsletter. The promotion ended on November 13th and wasn't available on Playstation Network however.

December 3rd will be the first official release of the Baoynetta demo in the west for PS3 owners or anyone who didn't want to sign up for a newsletter or make a fake Japanese account. There has been much worry and speculation over the PS3 version of Bayonetta's western release in January. It is doubtful that any of Sega's response will show up in this demo.

As soon as the Japanese demo was released comparisons between the two versions revealed a better framerate, faster load times, and better color contrast in the Xbox 360 version. Sega – responsible for the PS3 port from Platinum Games' original on the Xbox, has expressed intentions to at least improve the port's load times for the western release.

No word has been given specifically on what the western Bayonetta demo will contain, but it is likely that it will be identical to the Japanese demos only translated into English. If so, then the PS3 demo could carry the same inferiorities as its Japanese predecessor.

The Japanese demos also had different extra content for each version. The Japanese Xbox demo for Bayonetta contained an extra level that had players fight atop a falling clock tower whereas the PS3 demo contained an extra boss fight.

After its Japanese release Bayonetta got some surprisingly good critical reception with perfect scores from both Famitsu and British magazine Edge.

Fan-art by "npn."