Xbox One now supports trial and unlock game demos
Microsoft mulling better visibility for ID@Xbox titles.
Look on the Xbox One store and you still won't find many game demos. It's something users have asked Microsoft to encourage, and it sounds like Microsoft is listening.
Microsoft has recently updated the console with the same game trial functionality found on Xbox 360 - where you can download an Xbox Live Arcade title as a free demo and then pay to unlock the full version without downloading the game again. It's not something any available games currently make use of, but future titles are free to.
"When Xbox One launched you could do game demos and you could do games. But we didn't have the functionality that was on Xbox 360 - that 'trial' experience where you could download a demo and then convert it [to a full version]," Microsoft's ID@Xbox boss Chris Charla has told Eurogamer.
"But now we do. In the same way that we update the Xbox One OS every month, they update the development system every month - or regularly, anyway. So that's something that we recently turned on. I don't think we've seen any ID@Xbox games yet that have shipped with trials, but we may well in the future. It's something that's open to everybody."
And as for the main portion of the Xbox One store, Microsoft is considering ways of making ID@Xbox titles easier to find.
"At the beginning of the day and the end of the day, on Xbox One a game is a game is a game," Charla said - a qualifier that Microsoft has given in the past to explain why there are no filters for finding specific types of games. "They won't be segregated in any way at all.
"Saying that, we have had a lot of player requests for some way to specifically find the ID@Xbox games," he admitted, "so we have talked about adding some functionality so that people can do a search for just the ID@Xbox games.
"But anything we did like that would be in addition to our core values which are that they are in the store with everything else."
After a slow start, the pace of ID@Xbox releases now seems to be increasing. June saw four titles launch in one week, including Sixty Second Shooter Prime and Outlast. And there are plenty more on the way, Charla concluded.
"You can expect lots more games coming," he said. "There are literally hundreds of ID@Xbox games in development right now." Many will be out this year, but still more have been locked in for release further in the future. "There a lot in development for 2015, and some for 2016, too."
It's promising news - although questions around the Xbox One's dev kit and launch parity game policies remain.