Major Nelson yesterday explained the reason behind the lack of Xbox One demos, stating that it is up to the developer whether or not a demo is available for their game, even if it is just a downloadable title.

In a response to a comment asking why there was no demo available for Peggle 2, which released yesterday, and if Microsoft had changed their review policy, Major Nelson replied, “It is (and always has been) up to game developers to do demos for their own games. They’ll be more demos for Xbox One as the platform goes forward.”

Microsoft required that all developers made a free demo for their game if it was an Xbox Live Arcade title. You would have noticed that most of the “Games on Demand” never had a demo available, as this rule only applied to XBLA. However Xbox One has no feature to distinguish between smaller titles and bigger ones, with all games being available in the Xbox Games Store, alongside one another. Therefore Microsoft has decided against making every game, big or small, have a demo, leaving it down to each individual developer instead.

However the demos which are available on Xbox One aren’t easy to find, with you having to manually search for them using Xbox One’s built-in Bing service. Hopefully going forward Microsoft will make demos more accessible, with more developers deciding to offer demos for their games, although it is likely that bigger studios won’t bother much as they didn’t with Xbox 360 demos. Still, it would be beneficial for smaller developers to offer a demo for gamers to try before they buy.

Source: *majornelson.com

VIA: *OXM