Gamescom 2015: Microsoft Will “Absolutely” Consider Adding First-Party Titles

“As we bring more titles to Windows 10 and Xbox One and enable rich cross-device scenarios, we will continue to listen to our fans and evaluate what’s best for each individual game”.

As far as content curation and avoiding untrustworthy devs, Microsoft has given some thought to this as well – a huge relief, considering those are two of the biggest criticisms against Steam Early Access.

Responding to a question from Kotaku about whether internally developed Xbox One games will come to early access, publishing head Shannon Loftis said, “Absolutely, yes”.

Although the Xbox early access initiative was originally for indie games, Microsoft has since revealed it will use the program’s community-driven approach to help develop and test its own first-party exclusives. This is a way to extend the beta experience and also support development a little in the process. There you can find early versions of games and play them during their development and with your feedback contribute to their ongoing refinement.

The part about being able to finish the early build is particularly interesting, as it implies that the games will have a definitive end or some kind of conclusion.

“We are curating that program very much with an eye for making sure that the games are high-quality games”. We’ve been very clear with developers and gamers both that this isn’t a viable means of funding development. With digital versions of games hitting upwards of 50GB per game, storage space on the Xbox One can be depleted rather quickly. Of course, it’s ultimately up to Microsoft as to which games will be on Xbox Game Preview so we’ll have to wait and see how this pans out.