I'm the studio head at Perfect Dork Studios and this coming fall we will be in the GarageGames booth at the Austin GDC demoing our TorqueX 3D game, BOX MACABRE. Around the time of Austin GDC I will be starting a pretty aggressive push to alert the press and community about the game.

Unless you get a special treatment by MS (which I think is very unlikely), this is not possible. Because XBLIG does not allow for free games. The minimum price for a game is 200 MSP (if the game is <50MB, otherwise it's 400 MSP).

Doc

Something you could try, if you just want it to go to developers and not the general public, is to release it to playtest or as a ccgame package on your website with some code that checks the date on the console.  You could then pop up a message that the timed demo is over at the end of the month.  Of course people could change the date on their console to continue playing it after that, and you would have a very limited group of people who could get it.

The other option would be to actually release it at that time if you have a couple of polished levels, then pull it from release at the end of the month.  This would stop any new people from getting it, but anyone that already bought it would get to keep it and it wouldn't be free.  When the full version was released, anyone who already got it would be updated automatically with all the additional levels and work you've completed.

If you want it to be a free download to anyone, then as the previous poster said, you will have to work directly with Microsoft and try to get some deal.  Or release it on PC with some date checks and DRM...

Good to see another TorqueX and Austin, TX studio on here.  After seeing the videos on Garage Games, I'm looking forward to playing Box Macabre.

There's no way for us to release free downloads for an arbitary amount of time

You could always give out gift cards with points, though there is no guarentee that the gamers will buy your game with the points (and you would have to buy the gift cards).

I wish there was a way to get around this 200 point minimum for issues like this... being able to give a copy to gaming press would be another ideal situation, as I suspect many of the bloggers reviewing the game are reviewing the trial game and not the full version.

Kris Steele:

I wish there was a way to get around this 200 point minimum for issues like this... being able to give a copy to gaming press would be another ideal situation, as I suspect many of the bloggers reviewing the game are reviewing the trial game and not the full version.

My experience with StrikeForce Psi and talking with them was that many of the bloggers do generally review trial versions.  They also usually have contact info on their site, have one of the free trial creators club accounts, and are more than willing to review the full game if you provide them a download link to the ccgame file.  I did that for some of the bigger sites and for individual reviewers that had done many other games.  I didn't experience over sharing of the links, and had several email me to tell me they ended up buying the game even though they essentially had a free copy of it.

Thanks for the feedback guys. It is a tricky thing trying to do creative and effective marketing and with all of the overwhelmingly lackluster profit reports about the service it is a little heartbreaking that my project will not likely see a release on the Indie Games channel. Instead I have been contacting the major portals like Greenhouse and Steam and hoping to find a slot there instead where I know I can reach my intended audience and hopefully turn a profit. 

PerfectDork:

I suppose contacting MS is worth a shot.

You already got an answer from a member of the XNA team:

Pheel:

There's no way for us to release free downloads for an arbitary amount of time

For what it's worth, I looked at that while I was doing my reviewing.

Wouldn't it be possible to just have a trial, that is the same as the full game, and then at the end of the month, "update" the game to remove the free full parts.

But the trial would still only be 8min long...

DOc

Oh, crap, I forgot about that! Whoops.