Microsoft has officially announced Project Moorcroft, a program bringing new game demos to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with less financial risk for developers.

The program, which Microsoft said will roll out "within the next year," will initially be focused on indie developers rather than AAA companies. These developers will be paid for participation and will also have access to analytics on how their demos are performing.

This is quite important, as past research has shown that games with demos can actually sell fewer copies than those without. Somewhat strangely, this is often not the case with games released via Xbox Game Pass. Outriders, for instance, launched on Xbox Game Pass from the very beginning and still managed to sell about as well on Xbox as it did on PlayStation.