Xbox Game Pass will add demos next year
Microsoft has previously made it obvious to us, both actively and passively, that Xbox Game Pass is one of the company's most critical business sectors today. Many questioned whether it made logic and whether it could be commercially successful when it was first introduced. A viewpoint similar to that heard when music and video-on-demand services first arrived, in which the concept of ownership of the medium (but never of the content) vanished in return for a type of smorgasbord of free content for a monthly subscription.
Today, the debate over whether subscription models fit the market is more than a decade old, and while some users legitimately prefer to buy what they want (whether it's a music album, a movie, or a game) to be able to enjoy it without limitations and permanently, many others prefer to pay a monthly fee for access to a large catalog, and even those who maintain a subscription and, on occasion, buy some content of this type. Something for which Xbox Game Pass also provides interesting savings.
Microsoft has stepped up its efforts to convince more users of the benefits of its video game subscription service, a very long-term bet, because, as we can see on their official blog, they have published an entry in which they state that they are literally building the gaming platform for the next 20 years. If there was still anyone who doubted the future prospects of the Xbox Game Pass.
In the said publication, we can see some of the ideas, from the most recent to the most distant, with which Microsoft hopes to consolidate its gaming environment, and based on what we see in said entry, there is one component, in particular, that is less fascinating than expected. And it is true, after months of speculation, Microsoft has confirmed today that Xbox Game Pass would include game demos in its content.
This new feature will not be available right away; we will have to wait until 2023 when game demos will begin to be added to the Xbox Game Pass catalog. It's also worth noting that this statement and action come just two months after NVIDIA introduced the demos to the material available on GeForce NOW, the company's cloud gaming service. A coincidence that begs the question: will the Xbox Game Pass demos be added to Xbox Cloud so that they can be played without installing them?
However, initiatives such as Xbox Game Pass and GeForce NOW bring back demos, an excellent way to try games before purchasing them that was popular between the 1990s and the early 2000s, but instead of relying on physical media as it did back then, it now takes advantage of everything that broadband connections have to offer.
