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How would I go about adding a trial version and achievements for my Windows Phone 7 game?

And how can I make the game upon finding it's a trial prompt the user to purchase the game and redirect him/her to the games page on the AppHub?

meds
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For a trial version you can use the IsTrial API call - information about it on MSDN - you call this once in your game and assign a TrialMode value in your game to it as checking this in a Game Loop is not recommended, then you can have logic in your game change depending on what this value is - the Marketplace process takes care of the process of Try & Buy once you mark your app during the submission process as having a Trial mode.

Achievements are only available for Xbox LIVE enabled games which requires a special publishing relationship with Microsoft, I'm not sure of the process but try the create.msdn.com App Hub website, there may be information there, this is not open for all developers, as even now there are very few Xbox LIVE enabled titles in Marketplace

RoguePlanetoid
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  • Just edited my question and added one more question. Regarding the achievements I've seen plenty of non xbox live games offer achievements. Are they just custom achievements which mean nothing to your xbl account? – meds Nov 18 '10 at 15:44
  • You can call the MarketplaceDetailTask from within your application, I have seen this used to initiate a "Buy" for a Game, which will launch the Game's entry on Marketplace where someone can buy your game as this option will appear, this would be the same as if they found your game the first time on Marketplace where the "Try" option was. There may be some best practices for where and when to prompt a user - the App Hub website is great for this sort of advice/question. – RoguePlanetoid Nov 18 '10 at 15:49
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    @meds Yes, lots of games have their own achievements but these are entirely self contained and not tied to XBL. – Matt Lacey Nov 19 '10 at 11:05