Several months back during E3, Lucasarts said there would be a demo released around mid December, well it's close to mid December and it seems all of the Empire At War fans are going nuts. There's a sticky thread at the Official EAW Forums here where everyone is talking about it, already 7 pages long, but no real info on the demo itself.

Though we have yet to hear anything official from Lucasarts about a date or time frame for the demo other than the original statement of mid December. Though I myself was a bit surprised about the move of a demo released this early, I would have expected an Open Beta to help kick out any last bugs and balance issues before release, like so many other titles have done in the past and are still doing, like the LOTR: Battle for Middle Earth 2 beta going on next week.