14 DAY TRIAL // Phil Spencer, the leader of the Microsoft Studios, says that his team is exploring the possibility of adding paid alpha testing phases for some titles on the Xbox One home console in order to make sure that development teams get another revenue stream while they work on their titles.
The executive is quoted by Eurogamer as saying that the company wants to give gamers a variety of ways to invest in the games that they want to see launched in the future.
He explains that, “Paid Alphas I look at as one of those things. I think there’s an area of evolution that, as platform holders, we’ll go through this generation in helping developers fund their games socially.”
Spencer adds, “You don’t really have that in place on console as you do in some other places. I think that in order for great diverse content to exist, it’s going to be important that us as platform holders think about how we can allow gamers invest in things that they want to see built, so that developers have the funds to bring those things to market.”
The idea of paid alphas on the Xbox One sounds very similar to the Early Access concept that Valve has implemented in the Steam digital distribution service on the PC, which allows gamer to pay for an unfinished version of a title.
This allows fans to play a title months before it is officially finished, gives developers a new revenue stream and allows them to work with a large and dedicated community in order to perfect the core mechanics and eliminate bugs.
Titles like Rust and DayZ have managed to sell more than a million copies on Early Access and they have gained exposure that would have been hard to earn otherwise.
It’s unclear how Microsoft will decide what kind of titles will be allowed to deliver a paid alpha on the Xbox One and when the feature might be added to the home console.
At the moment, the company has announced the first 25 indie games that will be delivered on the next-gen platform, although none of them currently has an official launch date.
Microsoft is currently looking for new ideas that will expand the range of game experiences available on the Xbox One in order to make the device more attractive than the rival PlayStation 4 from Sony, which is currently ahead in terms of overall sales.