Project Moorcroft, an initiative related to game demos and Xbox Game Pass previously teased by Microsoft, no longer appears to be happening. This was an initiative first teased by Xbox in June 2022. It was going to allow developers to offer pre-release demos for their titles through Xbox Game Pass for notoriety and other, more analytics-driven, purposes. At the time, Moorcroft was planned to kick off within a year, but it never materialized.
Now, it seems like it never will. ID@Xbox global director Guy Richards revealed as much in a recent interview with The Game Business. He framed it as a way Xbox was experimenting with supporting indie developers before ultimately moving on to other demo-related initiatives and features on the Xbox Store.
Richards called Project Moorcroft “a program where we were experimenting with some ideas for how we can support demos on Xbox” before going on to highlight different ways ID@Xbox has done that recently. That includes game demo festivals and the ability to easily wishlist and be notified about game launches and discounts on the Xbox Store. “Demos is an area we’ve been focusing on, but in a slightly different direction to what Moorcroft was,” Richards ultimately admits.
While events like Steam Next Fest show how demo events can be very useful for indie studios, it’s hard not to feel like this is yet another failed initiative from the Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond era of Xbox. As of now, it does not seem like we should expect Project Moorcroft to ever see the light of day as an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate benefit.
