Xbox's Sarah Bond Talks About Bringing Demos To Xbox Game Pass

Oh… so this is starting to sound a bit different than it first appeared…. So this are not demos for games that are available to buy, but more akin to the demos the press would had been able to try out on an E3 event to preview an unfinished game? I would imagine these would likely be streaming only then, preventing data mining and the like.

"curated demos", "for creators to build excitement for their games early"

So it's not about giving gamers a chance to trial the game they will be spending money on. It's about creating hype to drive launch day purchases.

Which is still stupid.

Adding a trial period on all games would, firstly, avoid having to create a "curated demo" and could be universally implimented like XBLA using existing framework, secondly, give players actual hands on time with the actual product they will be buying, and not a marketing app, and thirdly, be available to everyone.

So these Game Pass demos are still anti-consumer. Thanks, I hate it.

@Kooky_Daisuke I am not sure what makes you even think this would replace full games on Game Pass.

As for this being available for everyone, if I read between the lines correctly, the reason is these demos will be streaming only.

I can understand that Demo's cost money to create and a Subscription model is bringing in Revenue that can be used to offset those costs, but I still think that these should be available for ALL.

The extra 'cost' of creating a Demo should be 'offset' by an increase in Sales as EVERYONE has the same opportunity to try it out. If you are limiting Demos to Subscribers only, especially those that get complete, full games every month, are they really the target audience? are they really more likely to buy when they could play numerous games at no cost?

No way would I be 'more' likely to buy ANY game (whether it has a Demo or Not) if its coming out around a big AAA Game Pass Day 1 release. I'd rather play the Games on Game Pass and pick up any others when they are on sale. I don't see why I should spend £60+ to play 'day 1' when I have 'hundreds' of games to play, finish etc. Its better to wait a few months for a 'fixed', patched and more complete version and save myself money...

For those who only 'buy' games, it makes much more sense to offer Demo's to them as they are your 'target' audience primarily. Its them you need to convince to spend money on your project over spending it elsewhere. Its those people that don't have 'hundreds' of games in their Library available to play and 'new day 1 releases' being added every month. They are the ones that have to spend money on something 'new' to play...

I remember when these demos were put on magazine cover disks. You had to pay for them then, but at least there was a cost, and you kept them.

This seems to be a bit of a "meh" feature to me. I may be just getting jaded in my old age, but I've stopped being "hyped" for new games. I don't want to see previews, sizzle reels, open betas, or vertical slices. Bring the game out when it's ready, and if it reviews well then I may play it.

Almost sounds like they plan to have gameplay shown at their shows… although it would be funny if the ‘demos’ end up just being cg trailers on gamepass…for ‘no additional cost’ of course…gotta love that line - “we’ve locked demos behind a paywall for no additional cost”

To be fair it sounds slightly better knowing these will be demos of games that are far away and not just round the corner. But the whole ‘to help out indie devs by giving exposure’ message they were peddling yesterday really doesn’t mesh well with sticking them behind a paywall.

This can go either way. We could end up playing games like ‘The Last night’ which never actually came out…so that could be pretty cool having a bunch of unreleased rarities out of this.
Or it could turn into their ‘big gets’ being third party demos down the line…or splitting the value of gamepass into further separate tiers where one gets full releases of third party whilst the other just gets demos… who knows.

Is this really any different than when EA Play let you do a few hours of a new game before release? Seems like the same thing. A perk of membership, nothing more.

@Xiovanni they are not locking demos behind a paywal, they are allowing people behind the paywall to play demos fo the available games.
don't complain about everything ppl

@Kooky_Daisuke would you expect netflix to replace series with trailers??

@Kooky_Daisuke I agree that neflix is going downhill like for ever now.
my point was that noone would replace a compele product with a trial version, your fear of seeing games replaced by demos would never never happen and nothing pointed at it being a possibility.
the demos are just there to make it easier to test the full product, they could never be the product.
if the demos are cloud only that would allow someone to test games instantly.
if the demos are downloadable that would allow to check a game by downloading a small part of the game and save time and data.

there are already demos for xbox available to everyone https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/game-demos/games/xbox
what's the point in making the gamepass demos available to everyone?

The standard should be try before you buy not buy to try before you buy

@Xiovanni xbox already has demos, that are supposed to make you buy the games.
The gamepass demos are only to give a quick taste, the product is already paid and it's gamepass not the game.
And customers are convinced to buy services not with demos, but with services trials. Similarly to how streaming is not enticing people with single episodes of series but with 7 day trials.

That a gamepass perk, if you want demos you can always download the ones available.

What is it with gamers these days, that no matter what, they sh*t on everything.
They react the same way

"Microsoft will give every Gamepass subscriber one million dollars in cash"

COMMENTS

Angryfool666 - "This is typical of Xbox, they know Gamepass sucks so are now trying to buy gamers by giving them money. After the pandemic money is tight, one million dollars won't get you much these days but they think we'll be fooled by this so called "generous offering" they think we can be bought. Well I, dear sir, cannot be bought. Unless they increase the amount to ten million and give me a Russian Oligarchs yacht in the Caribbean I'm off"

@NOCTORNUS

Another angry fan "why they don't give 1 million to every xbox owner?"

@demian Hah hah... you're right. I can see the response to that too..

Spoiledchild666 - "They won't give every xbox owner a million dollars because they're greedy and want us to subscribe to Gamepass for $10 a month, I'll not be fooled, I will never spend $10 just to get a million dollars they must think I'm stupid"

@Xiovanni how do you know that games with gamepass demos won't have free demos as well?

once again gamepass demos are for gamepass users, non gampeas users cant simply download.

gamepass demos are not to make you buy games, because the games are free for gamepass users. is just to make it easier to try the free games

@Xiovanni because if a demo is downloadable it will be a fraction of the game size and if it's streaming it will be instantly playable. Not everyone can afford the bandwidth, free disk, time to download the full game.