Microsoft Pulls the Plug on Project Moorcroft, Xbox's Pre-Release Demo Program

Xbox's Project Moorcroft, a program designed to bring pre-release game demos to Xbox Game Pass, has officially been canceled.

The program was first announced back in 2022 with plans to launch that same year, but it ultimately never happened.

The news came on March 12, 2026, when ID@Xbox global director Guy Richards confirmed the cancellation to The Game Business.

It is the latest in a series of changes shaking up the Xbox ecosystem since Phil Spencer stepped down as CEO of Microsoft Gaming earlier this year.

So, what exactly was Project Moorcroft?

In short, it was an initiative that would have allowed developers to publish pre-release demos of their upcoming titles on Xbox Game Pass.

The idea was to give studios a platform to gather meaningful feedback from players before a full launch, much like how early access works.

At the same time, it would have introduced Game Pass subscribers to titles they may never have discovered otherwise. On paper, it was a genuinely promising concept.

According to Richards, however, the program never quite reached the finish line. He described it as "a program where we were experimenting with some ideas for how we can support demos on Xbox." Despite the potential it showed, Microsoft has now pulled the plug on the initiative entirely.

The silver lining, if there is one, is that Microsoft has not abandoned the concept of demos altogether. As per Richards, the company still wants to pursue demos, just "in a slightly different direction to what Moorcroft was."

“We have actually been doing a lot of stuff that is slightly different with demos recently. We’ve been doing our own ID@Xbox demo festivals on the store, which is a really great opportunity to get games out early for players to try. Especially if you’ve got a product page up, and you can start collecting wishlists on Xbox."

“There are some really nice tips and tricks to make sure that somebody who tries their games on Xbox can easily wishlist them. They get notifications when the game launches, or is discounted. Demos is an area we’ve been focusing on, but in a slightly different direction to what Moorcroft was.”

Demos matter more than they often get credit for. They give developers a chance to catch bugs, measure player interest, and build a following before release day. For games that might otherwise fly under the radar, a well-timed demo can make a real difference.