If you want to check out the Xbox 360 game community and its seven game previews, you need to act now. The launcher will no longer be offered after midnight Tuesday and the demos will all expire March 9. After that, you can forget all about that whole "YouTube for games" thing until the real XNA Community launch, rumored to be six or so months away. First of all, you would think that Microsoft would have learned from its Xbox Live Arcade experiences that rather than give away games for a couple of weeks (even in their semi-completed states), it's better to offer a brief taste whenever the player wants it. (Some fans would probably enjoy the first level of The Dishwasher or a few sample levels of Jelly Car for months, and this would only whet their appetite for the finished game.) Of course, limited demos are even more powerful when you can convert someone directly to an immediate game sale, which is probably why they are being pulled. When the real service launches, we'll get the standard 15-30 minute samples with the constant urging to buy it now.
But this approach ignores the viral appeal of YouTube, which the service seems to want to emulate. Let word of mouth build a following for these and additional games over the next six months and you'll have an audience when they launch. Or let 'em die, and so will our interest.
Oh well, enjoy 'em while you can...
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