The Xbox One now supports game trials and unlock game demos

Being able to sample content from digital storefronts is one of the more compelling advantages of shopping digitally. Trial-sized portions of games could be sampled on the Xbox 360 by downloading Xbox Live Arcade titles, which could then be used to unlock the full game without an additional download, but multi-purpose downloads haven’t appeared on the Xbox One. That has the potential to change, according to Eurogamer’s interview with ID@Xbox Program Director Chris Charla. While demoes and full games are generally separate downloads on Xbox One, the option to offer both in the same file is something that’s been “recently turned on,” Charla said. “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.”

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.