Xbox unveils Project Moorcroft offering E3-like game demos to Game Pass members

Cal Jeffrey

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In a nutshell: The next-gen subscription war is heating up. Along with Sony's restructuring of PlayStation Plus (PS Plus), it is bringing timed demos to certain games. As if to follow suit, Xbox announced today that it would be bringing indie game demos to Game Pass subscribers. It's also adding another perk for Ultimate members that lets them play games they own from the cloud.

On Thursday, Microsoft held its "What's Next For Gaming" presentation outlining what the folks at Xbox have been brewing. The blog post mentioned Project Moorcroft, a venture aiming to bring curated demos to Xbox Game Pass subscribers. The move sounds somewhat like Sony's idea of timed trials for games over $35 for PS Plus Premium members.

However, Moorcroft is focused more on getting indie developers noticed, even going so far as compensating them for creating demos of their games to host on Game Pass. It also allows studios to see how well received their titles are and gather feedback from players as they polish games for release.

Microsoft's CVP of Game Creator Experience and Ecosystem Sarah Bond told gaming outlet Stevivor that Project Moorhead aims to recreate the hands-on feel that has been missing for the last couple of years due to the lack of an E3 in-person experience (above).

"Why don't we take Game Pass and make it like the show floor?" said Bond. "Why don't we make it possible for a developer to take a piece, a level of their game, release it into Game Pass, generate excitement for what's coming, and also get that really valuable feedback as they're tuning and preparing their game for launch?"

Microsoft didn't have a solid timeframe for when Game Pass would start posting these demos. However, it did mention Project Moorcroft in the same breath as another new perk rolling out to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers.

Starting later this year, Xbox will begin allowing Ultimate members to play "select" games they own from the cloud. It will even work with games purchased outside of their Game Pass library. While playing from the cloud is certainly not better than playing installed titles, it allows players access their games from mobile devices, PCs, or anytime they are away from their console.

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While Sony demands demos from developers without compensation, Xbox raises to the occasion providing developers with the proper payments for their time and hard work.
 
While Sony demands demos from developers without compensation, Xbox raises to the occasion providing developers with the proper payments for their time and hard work.

They don't need compensation for releasing a demo (these demos were the trend in every gaming magazine, boutique, etc. FOR FREE at one time) that is technically a part of the original title that takes a short time for them to create (that reads to me like the devs know that their games has issues and they need to be paid, first, before gamers find out just how bad their game really sucks).

MS has boatloads of money to throw at studios to (fake) win but they still fall short to Sony's platform due to Sony's top-notched industry quality of titles. MS does not have squat to compete with Sony here, so, MS's only weapon is to come off as the good guy but the devs only have two choices, either fall in line with the biggest in the industry or fall to the weakest one in the industry and risk losing millions in revenue.

It is great that Sony is forcing these AAA devs to guarantee and hold them accountable for their QA and QC for their titles or risk being rejected by the biggest AAA game publisher on the planet.

Obviously, Sony refuses to go through another CP2077 fiasco and this is just great for gamers and terrifying for weak devs/pubs (because now, they really got to work for their money) that they will no longer get away with releasing flop titles anymore without any repercussion.

Win-win for Sony and gamers!
 
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They don't need compensation for releasing a demo (these demos were the trend in every gaming magazine, boutique, etc. FOR FREE at one time) that is technically a part of the original title that takes a short time for them to create (that reads to me like the devs know that their games has issues and they need to be paid, first, before gamers find out just how bad their game really sucks).

MS has boatloads of money to throw at studios to (fake) win but they still fall short to Sony's platform due to Sony's top-notched industry quality of titles. MS does not have squat to compete with Sony here, so, MS's only weapon is to come off as the good guy but the devs only have two choices, either fall in line with the biggest in the industry or fall to the weakest one in the industry and risk losing millions in revenue.

It is great that Sony is forcing these AAA devs to guarantee and hold them accountable for their QA and QC for their titles or risk being rejected by the biggest AAA game publisher on the planet.

Obviously, Sony refuses to go through another CP2077 fiasco and this is just great for gamers and terrifying for weak devs/pubs (because now, they really got to work for their money) that they will no longer get away with releasing flop titles anymore without any repercussion.

Win-win for Sony and gamers!
Sony is not forcing developers to make demos for no compensation. These are 2-hour timed trials of the full games so the only programming that needs to be done is in setting up the timer, which is reportedly being handled by the PlayStation Store team.
Sony might bear the brunt of creating PlayStation Plus game trials for developers
 
Sony is not forcing developers to make demos for no compensation. These are 2-hour timed trials of the full games so the only programming that needs to be done is in setting up the timer, which is reportedly being handled by the PlayStation Store team.
Sony might bear the brunt of creating PlayStation Plus game trials for developers
Sony is forcing these AAA devs ***to guarantee and hold them accountable for their QA and QC for their titles*** or risk being rejected by the biggest AAA game publisher on the planet.

I didn't say forcing the dev to create a demo, only QA and QC, without Sony wording it as such, yet.
 
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