Microsoft’s Chris Charla has said that a commonly requested feature among developers is for a Steam-style Early Access program for the Xbox One.
Speaking in an interview with industry news site Develop, Charla said: “Right now on Xbox One and Xbox 360, you can do betas. A lot of games do, and some games do private betas,” he explained. “When we talk about early access, it typically means a game that you buy and it evolves over time to become 1.0, so you’re buying it before it’s 1.0 – Minecraft on PC is a perfect example.”
“It’s something developers have been asking for, and we are listening really closely to developers, but I don’t have anything to announce on that right now,” he continued.
The news comes following last week’s reports that Microsoft had abandoned plans to allow every Xbox One to be used as a Dev Kit - reports the Redmond giant later denied. It also comes following SCEA’s vice president of Developer Relations, Adam Boyes, stating last week that Sony is considering a similar initiative for PlayStation 4.
Steam’s Early Access initiative has been a huge success among both consumers and developers alike, though it isn’t without its critics. One commonly cited complaint is that it’s led to a glut of unfinished games being released on the store, some of which go abandoned and never achieve a final retail release. But it is also one way in which developers - particularly Indie developers - are able to both finance further production of their titles, while gathering valuable user feedback throughout the creation process.
How this sort of scheme would potentially work on consoles is unclear, but it’s certainly interesting that both Sony and Microsoft appear to be looking towards the PC gaming market for ideas about how to make their consoles more attractive to developers.
Dale Morgan
@spamdangled
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