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All gamers have at some point left the store and silently hoped their purchase doesn’t turn into the next over-hyped game that fails to meet expectations. These hopes have in large part spawned the trend of magazines like PlayStation Magazine and the Official Xbox Magazine packaging demo disks with their publications.
Now Microsoft itself is addressing gamers’ anxiety with Xbox Exhibition, a for-sale disk scheduled to ship today (November 12) that includes playable demos, downloadable content and video trailers of upcoming titles.
Xbox Exhibition will retail for $7.99 USD ($9.99 Canadian) and will provide gamers the opportunity to try titles before they buy them or sample genres with which they’re unfamiliar.
Not sure whether you’ll like an online-enabled party game like Whacked!? Try it out first on Xbox Exhibition to make up your mind. Unsure how NFL Fever 2003 will compare to last year’s version, or even to Madden 2003? Hit the virtual gridiron on Xbox Exhibition to play demo versions of both 2003 titles for yourself.
The debut Xbox Exhibition disk will include nine playable demos:
· Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell
· Panzer Dragoon Orta
· Quantum Redshift
· ToeJam & Earl III: Mission to Earth
· NFL Fever 2003
· TimeSplitters 2
· Whacked!
· Madden NFL 2003
· Halo
Additional content on the initial Exhibition will include soundtracks that you can rip to your hard drive, new costumes for Dead or Alive 3, game saves, ever-elusive cheats and videos for upcoming games (yes, the much-watched Halo 2 trailer will be included).
Gamers need not worry about any of the cheats misbalancing the fairness of competition on Xbox Live, though. Microsoft has assured DailyGame.net that the cheats available through Xbox Exhibition disks will be essentially the same codes and other “enhancements” you’d find online or in a magazine. Having them available on the disk simply organizes them in a single location for gamers to easily access them.
Although Xbox Exhibition may sound like a direct competitor to the disk included with the Official Xbox Magazine, Mike Salmon, editor in chief of the Official Xbox Magazine, told DailyGame.net that Xbox Exhibition is a good way to expose even more gamers to popular Xbox games without needing to buy them.
“I’m not too worried about [the OXM disk] competing with Microsoft’s,” he said. “They know what demos we have, we know what they have, and we’ve got all the same ones, plus we include a magazine in the price. This is just a good way to blanket the market.”
Microsoft representatives concur, saying that not only have they been working with OXM to ensure both disks meet gamers’ needs, but that the Xbox Exhibition will be available in stores such as Wal-Mart and Target, where few consumers purchase OXM anyway.
New Xbox Exhibition disks will be available on a quarterly basis and will include demos, videos and downloadable content that coincide with the hottest Xbox games and news. Look for the inaugural disk on store shelves later this week.
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