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Microsoft is furthering their Early Access preview program with some new incentives.
According to Shannon Loftis, Global Publishing general manager,

"First party will be using Game Preview for our games," Loftis tells us. "It's not 100 percent. It's very much developer choice, but it is definitely an option."
"We are curating that program," she says. "We're curating it very much with an eye for making sure that the games are high-quality games. A lot of the issues we've seen with the folks that tried this sort of service earlier have seen, are things that we've been able to learn from. There is a little bit of extrapolation that the gamer has to make in order to guess that the end product is good. So far, nothing has backfired as far as gamer reception, but we are being very cautious."

This kind of program could soon allow you to try out, or beta test first party titles before their initial release. Could this be a way of preventing another Unity style blunder, and allow developers to fine tune their games before initial release?

The program so far has been much like Steam's early access platform, allowing gamers to try games before their full release, which allows developers to bug test and improve upon aspects of the game... most of the time. It's also worth mentioning that early access is never free. Costs are still implemented and that money is always at risk of potentially going toward a project that may take years to finish its release.

Early access has had its share of blunders, with developers never coming back to finish the title, scrapping the game and starting fresh on numerous occasion and stringing along gamers to the point of mental fury. Could the same also apply to Microsoft's first party in the future?

It sure is an interesting concept.

SOURCE

 

[LittleFlame]

Seems like they just want their own version of steam early acces to get in on the money tbh

 

[CathyRina]

Seems like they just want their own version of steam early acces to get in on the money tbh

The Preview Program already is their own version of Early Access.
Although unlike Valve, Microsoft probably cares about moderating their content.

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I think this is a good choice. Those who don't want to play a buggy game will wait till release date. Those who don't want to wait will basically bug test the game prior to release.
After all 100,000 players can find more bugs than 100 paid ones.
The only thing that worries me is that Publishers already struggle to keep the attention on their a few weeks old games. If people start playing it prior to release then they could have enough of the game before it even comes out.

 

[WiiCube_2013]

Seems like they just want their own version of steam early acces to get in on the money tbh

Hopefully it's not as bad as Steam's gems, just the one below for example.

 

[CathyRina]

Hopefully it's not as bad as Steam's gems, just the one below for example.

Thank god for Jim though.

 

[WiiCube_2013]

Thank god for Jim though.

Even he wasn't able to figure out the game so that guarantees no one else will. Except for Lord Scumbag.

 

[59672]

But they've already been doing this with games like halo master chief collection

 

[Pecrow]

Hopefully it's not as bad as Steam's gems, just the one below for example.

Never head of this game, but it looks like everyone was scammed real nice. How much is the game and how many sales?

 

[WiiCube_2013]

Unable to know since it seems to be unavailable as of now.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/371440/

 

[CathyRina]

Well at least

Anyway this is why Steam needs curation. Having refunds is nice but not having such junk on the store would be better.

 

[irvinscastle]

But they've already been doing this with games like halo master chief collection

fucking lol'ed