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Trial And Unlock Game Demo Functionality Now On Xbox One
On the Xbox 360, when players downloaded demos for Xbox Live Arcade games, they were actually downloading the games in their entirety. This would allow players to try out a game and purchase it without having to re-download anything. At launch, this was not an option with Xbox One games, but a recent update allows developers to take advantage of this feature again.
Previously, developers had to basically launch two separate apps if they wanted to release a demo for their game. Microsoft's ID@Xbox boss Chris Charla spoke to Eurogamer about the new/old feature's return. Charla said, "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."
In the interview with Eurogamer, Charla also spoke about trying to make ID@Xbox games easier to find on the store in the future saying, "We have had a lot of player requests for some way to specifically find the ID@Xbox games, so we have talked about adding some functionality so that people can do a search for just the ID@Xbox games."
[Source: Eurogamer, via Joystiq]
Our Take
This was always a feature I appreciated on Xbox 360. I use the image above because I have a distinct memory of downloading and playing the Braid demo, and when that dinosaur asked me if I wanted to unlock the full game, I replied 'yes' without hesitation. It's also a handy way to pre-load a game you aren't completely sure you're going to buy yet, which is nice, too.
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