Early access and try-before-you-buy with Xbox Game Preview

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On top of backwards compatibility, Microsoft had another crowd-pleasing new Xbox One feature to announce during its E3 keynote – Xbox Game Preview.

This works very much like the incredibly popular Early Access program of Steam, in that it allows you to buy, download and play games by independent developers while they’re still being made. The idea is that your feedback can shape the final game. It sure can’t be bad for developers to start making some money on their game before it’s even finished, either.

Try before you buy – starting today

What’s extra interesting here is that every game featured in Xbox Game Preview will have a free trial so that you can decide whether to take the plunge and buy the game in early access, or wait for the final version.

And perhaps best of all, Xbox Game Preview starts this very day with the Xbox One port of brilliant space-flight sim Elite Dangerous and apocalypse survival adventure The Long Dark. By the time you read this both might already be available through the Xbox One dashboard.

The only other two games so far confirmed for the program are Shelter and DayZ, but no dates have so far been revealed for those.

Stay tuned › to our E3 2015 Liveblog for all the gaming news as it happens

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Tom is a nerd. A gaming nerd, a home cinema nerd, a hi-fi nerd and a car nerd. And a bit of a bike nerd, and phone nerd, and computer nerd. Let's call the whole thing off and just go with all-round nerd. In the past he's been an audio book actor, a games tester, a chocolate salesman and a teacher in Japan. Then he joined What Hi-Fi? as a reviewer back in 2007 and moved to Stuff as Reviews Editor in 2011. After a five-year stint on Stuff he rejoined the What Hi-Fi? team where he currently rules the reviews team with a candy floss fist.