rpi 400 img - vmware player

I saw this: https://ubuntu.com/download/raspberry-pi/thank-you?version=20.10&architecture=desktop-arm64+raspi

I wanted to try it out in Vmware Player to see how it is before going off and buying a rpi 400, alas I cannot install it... so far I tried

unxz ubuntu-20.10-preinstalled-desktop-arm64+raspi.img.xz

to get to just a img file and that doesn't work, so next I tried

qemu-img convert -O vmdk ubuntu-20.10-preinstalled-desktop-arm64+raspi.img.img ubuntu-20.10-preinstalled-desktop-arm64+raspi.vmdk

And installed it to VMWare as a HDD and tried to boot it and that doesn't work either.

How can I trial your software before going out and buying hardware for it to run on to know it works?
I'd hardly want to buy hardware for software that doesn't work.