Availability of Demos for Xbox 360 Games
Every Xbox Live Arcade game and every Xbox Indie Game on the 360 must have a demo per Microsoft’s requirements. However, not every retail game is required to provide a demo, and these days many don’t. There are far fewer retail game demos today than there were when the Xbox 360 launched in 2005. A bad demo — and there have been quite a few bad ones — can sour gamers on an otherwise good game, so many publishers stopped offering demos entirely. Producing demos also put extra strain on developers, so not doing demos anymore freed them up to put more work into the game itself. There are more than 300 demos listed on the Xbox 360 Game Demo page. That doesn’t include every demo that has ever been on the service, of course, just the ones available now. Some have been deleted over the years.
How to Filter Game Demos
When you arrive at the Xbox 360 Game Demo page, you’ll see a thumbnail of each game demo along with its release date and star rating. Use the drop-down menu at the top of the page next to SORT BY to sort the hundreds of games by one of five options:
Best selling todayRelease DateBest selling all-timeTop ratedTitle (in alphabetical order)
In the left column, you can select all genres or filter the demos by a specific game genre. They include:
Fighting Action & Adventure Shooter Puzzle & Trivia Racing and Flying Avatar Classics Educational Family Music Platformer Role Playing Sports & Recreation Strategy & Simulation
You can also filter by game ratings. The options include:
E - EveryoneE10 - Everyone 10+T - TeenM - MatureRP - Rating Pending
How to Try out a Demo Game on Xbox 360
When you locate a game demo that interests you, click on its thumbnail image to open and view an expanded overview of the game along with other information about it in the Xbox Marketplace. You’ll be able to see the game rating, release date, star rating, images from the game, download size and an overview description of the game. If the demo interests you, click the Download to Xbox 360 button. Sign in to your Microsoft account to download the demo. If you don’t have an account, follow the on-screen directions to create one.
