From OXM UK
First it's a major pain in the ass to find the demos. Now, there won't be many demos anyway? Well that sucks!
First it's a major pain in the ass to find the demos. Now, there won't be many demos anyway? Well that sucks!
Microsoft: more Xbox One games will get demos "as the platform goes forward"
It's up to developers to do this, says the Major
Posted on Tuesday 10th Dec 2013 at 11:35 AM UTC By Edwin Evans-Thirlwell, Deputy Editor for OXM
Annoyed by the scarcity of demos for the first Xbox One games? Don't worry, Microsoft hasn't decided to stop supporting them, but it doesn't insist that developers create them, either.
"It is (and always has been) up to game developers to do demos for their own games," Microsoft PR chap Larry Hryb observed in a comment on his blog. "[There'll] be more demos for Xbox One as the platform goes forward."
Microsoft once required Xbox Live Arcade developers to release game trials, but this isn't the case with downloadable titles on Xbox One. "Not all [digital] games will have demos like Xbox Live Arcade games have had on Xbox 360," Xbox Live exec Marc Whitten revealed in September. "That said, we are going to work on lots of ways to make it easy for you to find and try new games on the service."
It's possible all this has something to do with the increasing popularity of free-to-play on console - free-to-play titles are effectively very robust game trials, after all, in which you pay incrementally to unlock the rest of the content. Publishers have long entertained misgivings about the efficacy of traditional demos, which are expensive to produce - releasing a demo may even "cut game sales in half", according to one industry figure.
I had a blog-length think about the implications in March. What's your take? Annoyingly, what few demos there are on Xbox One don't appear on the main storefront - you'll need to search for them using the console's built-in Bing service.
Thanks, NowGamer.
It's up to developers to do this, says the Major
Posted on Tuesday 10th Dec 2013 at 11:35 AM UTC By Edwin Evans-Thirlwell, Deputy Editor for OXM
Annoyed by the scarcity of demos for the first Xbox One games? Don't worry, Microsoft hasn't decided to stop supporting them, but it doesn't insist that developers create them, either.
"It is (and always has been) up to game developers to do demos for their own games," Microsoft PR chap Larry Hryb observed in a comment on his blog. "[There'll] be more demos for Xbox One as the platform goes forward."
Microsoft once required Xbox Live Arcade developers to release game trials, but this isn't the case with downloadable titles on Xbox One. "Not all [digital] games will have demos like Xbox Live Arcade games have had on Xbox 360," Xbox Live exec Marc Whitten revealed in September. "That said, we are going to work on lots of ways to make it easy for you to find and try new games on the service."
It's possible all this has something to do with the increasing popularity of free-to-play on console - free-to-play titles are effectively very robust game trials, after all, in which you pay incrementally to unlock the rest of the content. Publishers have long entertained misgivings about the efficacy of traditional demos, which are expensive to produce - releasing a demo may even "cut game sales in half", according to one industry figure.
I had a blog-length think about the implications in March. What's your take? Annoyingly, what few demos there are on Xbox One don't appear on the main storefront - you'll need to search for them using the console's built-in Bing service.
Thanks, NowGamer.