Having the urge to finally get some hands-on time with 'Gears of War 4' has been an interesting endeavor. First off, the installation process has been a rather tricky / time consuming ordeal to say the least. For starters, 'Gears 4' naturally requires enough adequate hard-drive space to accommodate the whopping 100 GB "plus" install - which, meant formatting an external hard-drive to ultimately compliment the dwindling capacity on my XBOX ONE's 1 TB internal HD.
While the aforementioned task was pretty straightforward... get the newer USB 3.0 hard-drive functioning properly, so I could move other (lesser-played / less prominent) game installs from the internal drive to the external - freeing-up enough space on the console's main hard-drive for 'GOW4', and (hopefully) providing a more seamless gaming experience with this title (not hampered by excessive loading times by the external drive).
From there however, I happened to run into another head-scratching debacle that needed to be rectified ASAP. So, a few years back in 2021 (I believe), Microsoft decided to indulge XBOX LIVE Gold Members with a complimentary Trial Version of 'Gears of War 4'. Now, this wasn't exactly a monthly 'Games with Gold' offer, where they give you a full title (for free) to keep in your 'Games Owned' section, just for being a Gold Member.
No sir re bob, instead they somehow decided to attach / bind this Trial version of 'Gears 4' to my account / gamertag profile permanently at their discretion... with absolutely no way to opt out I guess. Therefore, even if I wasn't interested in playing this "somewhat rare" Trial version of a full retail game (that only a select few titles even provide these days), the game icon / thumbnail for 'GOW4' was still present and lingering dormant in my catalog of "ready-to-install' games with an unsightly text that says "TRIAL" on it.
Whatever the case may be, apparently this Trial of 'Gears of War 4' is a timed 10 hour excursion... basically giving players access to "most" of the interactive experience while on a ticking clock. Needless to say, this somewhat locked version of the full game still requires a staggering 100 GB install, and even informs individuals how much time is left on their trial period when booting-up the game.
Without running-off on a tangent, I really had no prior knowledge of this 'GOW4' Trial (and it's implications) until recently installing the full game off the included retail disc copy from the 'Ultimate Edition'. So, after a few / handful of hours getting this title installed onto the internal hard-drive, the very same 'Gears 4' thumbnail still mentioned the dreaded "TRIAL" after the whole process completed. Furthermore, the game's storefront location only gave me the option to either play the installed Trial or Buy the Game, even though the retail disc was in the tray to override any DRM / licensing issues, as I don't currently own the digital download.
Basically in a nutshell, even though I own a full version of 'Gears of War 4', this forced Trial that's been reluctantly attached to my XBOX LIVE Account (for years) is sorta' conflicting with the actual install of the full game itself and can't be removed from my profile regardless of the steps taken. So now whenever I wanna' fire-up some 'Gears 4', the icon displayed for this game still registers as a "TRIAL" of course. Thankfully if this retail disc is being acknowledged in the tray, the full game will play accordingly - but once it's removed, the booting process immediately switches back to the attached Trial instead.
All in all, I merely wanted to provide a little insight into this whole 'Gears of War 4' installation process and the misfortune of having to deal with the gifted Trial as well. After doing some research, I'm aware that other XBOX LIVE Gold Members have also been afflicted with this (tedious and somewhat perplexing) ordeal after being given the Trial version of 'Gears 4' a while back. Geez, these more current-gen titles already require such MASSIVE game installs, and everything gets even more complicated when you factor in these redundant (conflicting) files that are more-or-less forced onto our accounts within our consoles.
Thankfully, there definitely seems to be a work-around by simply owning the full game, either through a disc or digital purchase - even if the Trial version of this title still remains a permanent fixture / hindrance on your XBOX ONE / Series X/S systems.
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