Microsoft To Enable User-Created Xbox 360 Games

Lunchbox · Post by **Lunchbox** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 12:10 am

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_i ... tory=10458

BREAKING: Microsoft To Enable User-Created Xbox 360 Games

Talking on the eve of its Gamefest event in Seattle, Microsoft has revealed XNA Game Studio Express, a new product which will allow indie developers and students to develop simultaneously on Xbox 360 and PC, and share their games to others in a new Xbox 360 'Creators Club'.

The details of the new tech are as follows: XNA Game Studio Express will be available for free to anyone with a Windows XP-based PC, and will provide them with what's described as "Microsoft's next-generation platform for game development." In addition, by joining a "creators club" for an annual subscription fee of $99, users will be able to build, test and share their games on Xbox 360, as well as access a wealth of materials to help speed the game development progress.

In an official statement related to this major announcement, Microsoft suggested that the new product "...will democratize game development by delivering the necessary tools to hobbyists, students, indie developers and studios alike to help them bring their creative game ideas to life while nurturing game development talent, collaboration and sharing that will benefit the entire industry."

The games created with XNA Game Studio Express will not initially be available to regular Xbox 360 users, although there is hope that successful titles made with the package might go on to debut in enhanced form on the universal Xbox Live Arcade service, and a longer-term goal is to create a less restricted distribution market using Xbox Live. In the meantime, a second XNA toolset named Game Studio Professional, originally scheduled tentatively for an early 2006 release, is now due in spring 2007, and is intended to cater more directly to professionals aiming for Windows and XBLA game releases.

Microsoft has enlisted the help of several partners for this major announcement - indie publisher/developer GarageGames, technology provider and creator of Marble Blast Ultra, has migrated both its Torque Shader Engine and new Torque Game Builder 2-D visual game designer over to the XNA Game Studio Express platform, and Autodesk announced that game developers and enthusiasts can now more easily incorporate content into XNA Game Studio Express via Autodesk's FBX file exchange format.

In addition, more than 10 universities and their game development schools ? including University of Southern California, Georgia Tech College of Computing and Southern Methodist University Guildhall ? have already pledged to integrate console game development and XNA Game Studio Express into their curricula for the first time, and Xbox 360 will be the only console at the center of all coursework.

The XNA Game Studio Express beta will be available Aug. 30, 2006, as a free download on Windows XP, for development on the Windows XP platform. The final version of XNA Game Studio Express will be available this holiday season.

Microsoft's general manager of the Game Developer Group, Chris Satchell, commented on this major announcement: "By unlocking retail Xbox 360 consoles for community-created games, we are ushering in a new era of cross-platform games based on the XNA platform. We are looking forward to the day when all the resulting talent-sharing and creativity transforms into a thriving community of user-created games on Xbox 360."

[UPDATE - 08/13/06, 9.30pm PST - added further information on universality of user-created games.]

Post by **pixel** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 12:23 am

It's official: (Microsoft > Sony) < Nintendo.

impetus · Post by **impetus** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 12:52 am

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Wagh · Post by **Wagh** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 1:03 am

pixel wrote:It's official: (Microsoft > Sony) < Nintendo.

So uh, will there ever be a next gen console thread where you don't simply state that nintendo is god and claim others are just wrong?

gamedudex2 · Post by **gamedudex2** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 1:11 am

what we need for consoles is the ability to make game mods like on pc.

MulletMan13 · Post by **MulletMan13** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 2:46 am

Hats off to MS on this, very good thing. Nintendo and MS are both allowing semi-homebrew.... Sony's turn.

DaMadFiddler · Post by **DaMadFiddler** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 2:53 am

Okay, my interest in the 360 just went from nil to "possibly."

Ex-Cyber · Post by **Ex-Cyber** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 5:58 am

I suspect this is going to have the same major problems as Net Yaroze:

- Inability to play the user-created games without paying the subscription fee
- Inability to freely distribute games you've created
- Crippled stock libraries to keep the hobbyist devkit from competing with the professional one
- Inability to use any considerable tools/libs not provided by the console manufacturer

Post by **Specially Cork** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 6:49 am

Yeah. Basically theyre providing a homebrew scene where they will be able to make money off everything you create, while you make nothing. Great.

Covar · Post by **Covar** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 7:28 am

so this means that amatuer programmers don't get complete acess to directx10 and the rest of xna?
that blows. however acess to making 360 games is very appealing.

i'll have to try the beta.

FETUS · Post by **FETUS** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 12:07 pm

I think microsoft realized they were making the same mistake as sega by releasing their console so early and then took note that the only thing that kept it going was the homebrew community. Except they hope they aren't too late like the dreamcast.

gamedudex2 · Post by **gamedudex2** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 4:30 pm

Covar wrote:so this means that amatuer programmers don't get complete acess to directx10 and the rest of xna?
that blows. however acess to making 360 games is very appealing.

i'll have to try the beta.

i thought 360 only supports dx9?

Post by **pixel** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 4:57 pm

Wagh wrote:
pixel wrote:It's official: (Microsoft > Sony) < Nintendo.
So uh, will there ever be a next gen console thread where you don't simply state that nintendo is god and claim others are just wrong?

No.

Nintendo rules. Microsoft is pretty damn cool.

Ex-Cyber · Post by **Ex-Cyber** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 5:35 pm

Rumor has it that it's only going to support managed code running under a variant of the .NET Framework. This makes sense, since MS wouldn't want anyone poking around the kernel, generating arbitrary memory access sequences (to crack the runtime RAM encryption) and so forth.

BlackAura · Post by **BlackAura** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 7:22 pm

gamedudex2 wrote:i thought 360 only supports dx9?

Yep. Or close enough, anyway.

Post by **melancholy** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 8:04 pm

BoneyCork wrote:Yeah. Basically theyre providing a homebrew scene where they will be able to make money off everything you create, while you make nothing. Great.

I'm wondering if that's the case, though. I wonder if these games are going to be posted for free, or if Live users have to buy the games with points. If they can sell the games on Live, then this system might actually work. Think of it this way:

-Microsoft charges $100/year to use their tools and post games on Live
-Developer spends the $100, makes a decent homebrew game
-Developer uploads it to Live
-People see the game and use their Live points to buy the game
-Developer gets a percentage of the game's sales

This system would actually be good. It would weed out the non-dedicated due to the subscription fee, and also create incentive for the developer to make a good game, because the better the game, the more people download it, and the more money they get to offset the subscription cost. No more begging for Paypal donations, no more using non-legit methods to get your game on a console, and the Live users would be happy because they won't have to sift through thousands of crappy and incomplete games to find a good one.

toastman · Post by **toastman** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 10:59 pm

Also, these developers will get attention of bigger companies. Which is definitely worth the $100/yr.
Hell, that's less than a year's subscription to World of Warcraft.

chrisfbt1 · Post by **chrisfbt1** » Tue Aug 15, 2006 12:34 pm

MulletMan13 wrote:Hats off to MS on this, very good thing. Nintendo and MS are both allowing semi-homebrew.... Sony's turn.

i don't know what sony's ps3 plans are but it sounds a lot like

Net Yaroze and PS2Linux to me

Juan · Post by **Juan** » Thu Aug 31, 2006 4:48 pm

Games Studio Express Beta released

BlackAura · Post by **BlackAura** » Thu Aug 31, 2006 8:13 pm

Humpin' Hasney wrote:Not really though. Anything created on either of those were never fully available to end users.

Neither is anything created with XNA Express. To use it on an Xbox 360, you still need to pay the subscription fee, and you can only distribute source code because binaries won't work on anyone else's Xbox 360.

There's the possibility that anything good will be published on Xbox Live Arcade, but I think that still requires registered developer status, in addition to the professional version of XNA Studio.