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So, you're post was written in XNA then?

http://creators.xna.com/en-us/news/dreambuildplayoldspicewinners

XNA Creator's Club: http://creators.xna.com/ Supported Platforms for Game Development: * Windows * XBox * Windows Phone 7 * Zune * Silverlight (via SilverSprite) * iPhone and iPad (via XNA Touch)

I would suggest XNA Game Studio: http://creators.xna.com/en-US/

There are plenty of examples for you to tear apart and modify with the class. Everyone could create their own alien ships to destroy or something.

Programming, however, might be a but much for art students. If I were you, I'd go for texture implementations like model skinning (both world objects and character animation), 2d textures for menus, and sprite effects - how transparency comes into play, 3D space and z-order, and post processing effects like lights and such.

They you go.

-Mike

paying them chicken feed until they've proved themselves by getting their name on a published title

A lot of that is the fault of the console makers, who won't deal with an indie developer who starts his own studio until the developer has "relevant video game industry experience". Nintendo spells it out.

Not surprisingly, the most indie-friendly console is Microsoft's Xbox 360.

Why not surprisingly? Because of their roots in the PC world, where anyone can write anything and release it.

Anyway, MS has (among other things) the XNA Creators Club. XNA itself requires a version of Visual Studio to use it, but it can be one of the free Express Editions.

XNA games are allowed to use made up fantasy languages just not Elvish and Klingon.

The policy states "e.g. Elvish/Klingon". The e.g. notation means that a list is not exhaustive; therefore, Sindarin and Klingon are not the only prohibited constructed languages.

C# runs just fine on linux as well as Microsoft OSes meaning it hits most major computing platforms.

C# and other languages most commonly compiled to CIL notably do not run on devices running Apple iOS, which according to its SDK license agreement supports only two languages: JavaScript for web applications and Objective-C++ for native applications. Does CIL run on any handheld device other than the little-known Zune MP3 player and forthcoming cell phones running Windows Phone 7? Besides, the article mentions porting "an existing game".

yeah, if you live in america. In Austria for instance, we do not have XNA indie games

Weird, it looks like you can create and even sell them, but you can't download/buy them. Is this true?

I would look into installing Visual Studio C# Express 2008 and XNA Studio 3.1. This is a completely free setup for a Windows environment that has some incredibly easy examples and walkthroughs. http://creators.xna.com/en-US/ Your child can have their first 2D game up and running in a day. This will help build confidence and make them want to learn more on their own.

Give me a break. There is absolutely no reason why a console vendor couldn't publicly release the SDK and allow a programmer to turn the console into a development device in the same way the iPhone SDK does for the iPhone.

No technical reason. Most of the reasons have to do with money, security, and DRM. Not that there's particularly anything wrong with that, as long as it's expected.

That said, if you think the consoles are hopelessly locked down, check Microsoft's XNA Creator's Club. You get access to developer tools, a marketplace to sell games, and release is handled by peer review (both to rate quality and content). Tada, Indie Development, with only mild oversight by MS to prevent any significant abuses (illegal content) from slipping through.

Of course, if you also think nobody complains about the console method of gaming, then you must have missed the ongoing console v. PC debate. The iPhone v. open platform (like Android) debate is a carbon copy of console-PC.

For instance, MacOS ships with development tools.

Microsoft doesn't include them in a default installation, but they do give development tools away for free. Even for their game console.

Version 4 allows custom sound

Vapor until released. The CTP version is for Windows Phone 7 only, not Xbox 360. But consider this: Shawn Hargreaves maintained the Allegro library, which contained an audio stream API. He now works on XNA, and it took until 4.0 for XNA to have a counterpart to this API.

According to this, only "made up languages that are documented (e.g. Klingon/elvish)" are failed.

That's exactly what I was talking about, and it would appear to rule out a lot of RPGs.

• Version 4 allows custom sound: http://creators.xna.com/en-US/news/gdc2010
• According to this, only "made up languages that are documented (e.g. Klingon/elvish)" are failed.

• Version 4 allows custom sound: http://creators.xna.com/en-US/news/gdc2010
• According to this, only "made up languages that are documented (e.g. Klingon/elvish)" are failed.

I've also found it useful to change every interface that I use into the language that I'm learning.

Unless, of course, you're trying to learn something other than English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, or possibly Italian. Consumer electronics companies seem to think other languages don't exist.

I am a self-taught programmer and I have been programming for over 12 years. I started my interest in programming when I was 12, but wouldn't consider myself into programming until I was 14.

When I was 12, I got a C++ programming book and went through it fairly quickly. My interest was in developing video games like Doom, Quake, etc. At the time I was young and lacked the knowledge or dedication to look into this any further and became attached to HTML/JavaScript, PHP and AS2/3 as a web developer and 2d/3d animator/modeler/artist.

Slightly off-topic bg info: I actually went to school for Media Arts and Animation(Where I flunked out with 1 class to graduate due to financial issues and turned to programming permanently) and while I did take a couple minor programming courses based on AS2, I found that I already knew more than the teachers at my school on the subject from reading through the docs when I was 15-18 and ended up serving as a tutor in the classes(as I did in virtually all classes with nearly straight A's and still unable to graduate from final class, almost laughable if it hadn't cost so much) even though I would now consider my knowledge of AS2 at the time to be infantile. I should have expected as much since the school was dedicated to art students, many of whom could barely work a computer.

Back to the subject: I think the best way to get a new person into programming would be to teach them the fundamentals of object oriented programming first and make sure that it is taught around something they are interested in. For example, if the noobie is interested in games I would suggest teaching them to program in UnrealScript - Unreal Engine 3 - UDK or XNA Game Studio 3.1. If he is into 2d graphics and animation try AS3 or Silverlight(I do not really have experience with Silverlight past a few documentation glimpses and tutorials). If he just likes dealing with data try PHP/MySQL.

The important thing here is to make sure that he grasps the techniques needed to produce reliable, extend-able, clean and well documented object-oriented code. If he's really interested in programming he's probably already good with math and will pick up on the algebraic and geometrical side of things easily in school math classes and be able to relate them to the object-oriented ideas you have already instilled in him allowing him to be able to generate code producing quick visual results with any of the previously suggested packages. All of the languages I have suggested are extremely well documented.

I hope I have been helpful.

I alone could submit a game to the Xbox Live Arcade

Now try to implement speech synthesis to voice the characters' dialogue. No, XNA doesn't support generating audio data in real time. Now try to add words in the language of a fantasy culture that your player character encounters. No, XNA games may not include words in any language to which the system menu is not customized. Now try porting the game to a console that doesn't RROD. No, Sony and Nintendo don't have a Creators Club.

I alone could submit a game to the Xbox Live Arcade

Now try to implement speech synthesis to voice the characters' dialogue. No, XNA doesn't support generating audio data in real time. Now try to add words in the language of a fantasy culture that your player character encounters. No, XNA games may not include words in any language to which the system menu is not customized. Now try porting the game to a console that doesn't RROD. No, Sony and Nintendo don't have a Creators Club.

Microsoft and Xbox Live don't.

They do if you want to use a text-to-speech engine to voice dialogue in your game (no way to generate and play sampled sound at runtime) or if your game has a fantasy or sci-fi setting and you want to include an elvish or alien language (all languages to which the system menu is not localized are banned from Xbox Live Indie Games).

Microsoft and Xbox Live don't.

They do if you want to use a text-to-speech engine to voice dialogue in your game (no way to generate and play sampled sound at runtime) or if your game has a fantasy or sci-fi setting and you want to include an elvish or alien language (all languages to which the system menu is not localized are banned from Xbox Live Indie Games).

you can play homebrew without a mod.

Say I want to develop a game that uses speech synthesis instead of having every line by every character voice-acted. XNA doesn't let me do this because XNA provides no way to generate audio at runtime.

Say I want to develop a game with a fantasy setting that includes words written in a made-up language. This page states that Microsoft has banned all languages from Xbox LIVE Indie Games other than those for which the Xbox 360 system menu has been localized.

XNA doesn't have any way to synthesize audio in real time; all audio must be played from XACT sound banks, which correspond to archives of wav files or MP3 files. Nor does XNA allow on-screen text in any language for which the system menu hasn't been localized; that would have meant no Quenya or Sindarin if Tolkien were alive today and making XNA games.

XNA doesn't have any way to synthesize audio in real time; all audio must be played from XACT sound banks, which correspond to archives of wav files or MP3 files. Nor does XNA allow on-screen text in any language for which the system menu hasn't been localized; that would have meant no Quenya or Sindarin if Tolkien were alive today and making XNA games.

There's a ton of documentation around Microsofts xbox live arcade dev kit. There's no substantial difference between how those games are made and AAA titles are made beyond manpower.

http://creators.xna.com/en-US/faq

So if one makes a fantasy themed game for XNA, and it includes text in an elvish language, FAILED.

Got a source for this? There are plenty of XBox games with fantasy languages in already.

I'm going based on this page. In case the page is not available where you live, allow me to quote: "If your game includes - in any form - characters, symbols, or words from unsupported languages it WILL be FAILED." Perhaps all the games for Xbox 360 including text in a fantasy language are native games published by a big company.

See previous comments about producing a native game rather than XNA based game which is a perfectly feasible option.

Does Garage Games have a monopoly in publishing small developers' games that are unsuitable for XNA? If I get turned down, should I consider protesting by marketing the PC version as "the game Microsoft doesn't want you to play"? I'm trying to build a business plan here, and if getting started in video game development requires first quitting my day job and moving hundreds of miles away from everyone I know, I want to be sure that I'll at least have some income before jumping in head-first.

How many [HTPCs] would be used for gaming rather than PVRs or similar?

Conversely, how many PLAYSTATION®3 game consoles were purchased just for watching BD movies? I consider HTPC to be the foot in the door to the PC with Windows being the fourth console.

What about the likes of MythTV that has support for console emulators via MythGame?

ROM sites are illegal. Native HTPC games aren't, and publishers of HTPC games can market them accordingly.

Considering theres no homebrew scene in Xbox360, the sole reason people get their consoles modded is to play copies.

Wut.

There's a huge Xbox 360 homebrew scene, supported by the company itself: http://creators.xna.com/en-US/

Oh wait, let me guess: "that's doesn't count as homebrew because it's not indie enough!" Whatever.

However, I haven't found such issues with mathematicians, artists or musicians, that provided helpful advice in a much more friendly way, even discussion and tips, linking to user-friendly references that were easy to understand and straight to the point, without the wide load of "TV character" sarcasm provided by developers or extremely technical papers.

One problem you may be facing is that a lot of people do go onto IRC and community forums asking for code that they can cut, paste, and compile. It is a very frequent occurance, and unfortunatly people who regularly hang out in technical chat rooms have become suspicious of almost everyone outside of their known group. From students asking for answers to their HW, to even employees of some cheap off shore programming firms looking for help with their commercial project, experienced programmers have unfortgunatly beocme wary of helping others.

I would recommend you join a community that is specifically focused on helping beginning game programmers. Such communities do exist, something such as XNA might be of help, it is DirectX and C# based, not OpenGL, and although DirectX and OpenGL differ by a fair bit, the important thing is that you find an established community of people willing to help you.

Programming is really one of the more open fields. Compared to the physical sciences it has a very low entry price (the price of a computer, no other supplies needed!) and as you have found out for yourself, it is something that anyone who has a desire to can take up.

(Also IRC is full of dicks :P Try a discussion forum, #1 search result is OpenGL coding: beginners)

Instead of links to advanced reading material, maybe the not-so-advanced reading material could have been more useful. What left me with the impression of elitism was the way they reacted, being totally rude and overdone, like if I they thought I was someone they hated in disguise.

People have on hand the references that they use most often, it may very well be that the people you are asking are not aware of the latest up to date introductory references, as it has been a while since they themselves made use of that sort of material.

They probably realized Linux support buys them little over the Wii and XBox360 despite what I and everyone else thinks.

Xbox 360 has Creators Club and Xbox Live Indie Games, a business model that Apple copied for the iPhone SDK and App Store. What does Sony have to match it?

Alright, I give up, what does that have to do with this topic? Are you trying to imply that XNA is open source or what? Because it's not.

Are we supposed to get into a pissing match about features? Because I really don't care what the Wii, PS3 or XBox360 have. I know PS3's got Blu-Ray and XBox360 has Xbox Live and the Wii is just fun in a group setting. Who cares, this is about open source and Sony. No one else is supporting Linux on any of the three big consoles and bringing up XNA or Creators Club or Xbox Live Indie Games is all great but I really don't see what it has to do with this article.

I'm a developer who has had a game published on Xbox Live Community Games.

Although this isn't so much of a problem for XBLA, I think it is completely true that there are far too many low-quality titles flooding Xbox Live Community Games. The modicum of good games are being swamped by a flood of ill-designed, terribly-executed, low-quality games (and in many cases, "games"). The review process for publishing Xbox Live Community Games is designed to weed out technical issues; it's actually forbidden for a reviewer to reject a game submission because "he didn't like it". The reason for this is because the review process is done by fellow developers, and allowing subjective judgements in the review process introduces a conflict of interest.

As developers, we've time and time again asked Microsoft to introduce a user rating system, where the users of the service (and ultimately, our customers) will be able to give games ratings and allow for user recommendations. This should give power back to the users to weed out the bad games and allow the real gems of the service to shine.

As far as I can tell, Microsoft decided to actually listen to us. About a month and a half ago they announced that user ratings are coming to Xbox Live. From what I've heard, these features should be arriving in the coming months - so maybe once that happens things will get a little better.

OK Microsoft engineers put a LOT of very good effort into the XNA game development platform. And its a total failure. Let me explain why:

You can't call something a failure because your console RRoD's and you got shitty support. That has nothing to do with XNA. If you said XNA is a total failure because no one is playing the games, or no one is developing games with XNA (and then maybe provided some links), then I would believe. You just seem bitter that you went through some B.S. with your 360.

I've been trolling the XNA forums for a few years. There are hundreds of developers, and there is a thread where developers post how much money they are making. While very few are hitting it big, most people are happy making a little cash from doing a hobby that they enjoy.

So theres no advertisements for you, no "hey here is the best", nada.

That's changing.

So far the iPhone seems a lot better-the only complaint there is LOTS of competition. Which I am OK with

You're comparing apples to oranges. What if I wanted to develop an RTS or a multiplayer FPS? The iPhone's limitations with it's input, memory, and processing power, severely limit the scope of games that developers can create. Sure if my goal was to make maximum profit, I would try to make some cheezy time-waster and sell it on the iPhone. If I wanted to develop an original idea that pushes the limits, I would prefer developing for something more robust.

One thing I'd love to see is for a console to open up their development process and create an App Store similar to the iPhone. There would be an explosion of freeware, indie games, and assorted applications.

Microsoft's getting real, real close to that with XNA: http://creators.xna.com/en-US/

Perhaps not entirely what you are looking for as you would need to have a Windows OS in some form or fashion but I think the XNA Creators Club http://creators.xna.com/en-US is a good start at helping people develop. XNA Game Studio 3.0 allows you to develop for the Zune without paying for it. Then if you want to distribute it you just get a Premium Membership, get it peer reviewed, and away you go.

They have Visual C# Express for free download. So all you have to come up with is a computer running some flavor of windows.

To me it looks more like they took XNA and adapted it to something a bit more agnostic to underlying architecture. Almost like a Blackboard/XNA lovechild. They took the compartmentalized (class-driven) structure of XNA, gave a shared communication API in the same vein as Blackboard (think centralized communication system as opposed to shared discussion system... like the comm system in Quake 3 source), wrapped it up in a C# API, and called it a language.

Call me crazy... but in order for it to be truly a "language", it needs to have a compiler/interpretor, and not simply a few new keywords in an existing language (it's C# with some new datatypes).

"For Windows game development, XNA Game Studio Express is completely free and built on top of the popular and powerful Visual C# Express. For Xbox 360 game development, you'll need to subscribe to the Creators Club and have a retail Xbox 360 with a hard drive." -- XBox Registered Developer Program

"As a Premium member in the XNA Creators Club, youll be able to submit any complete Xbox 360 game youve created in XNA Game Studio to the Creators Club community at http://creators.xna.com/ for peer review. Other Premium Creators will check to make sure your game is safe to play. If it is, youll set a price point between 200 and 800 Points that people will pay to download your game.

Once the game is reviewed and the price point set, youre done. The game is listed on Xbox LIVE Marketplace, and youll get an electronic payment every quarter, for up to 70% of the games total revenue in your own currency. Depending on your games success, you may even have your game advertised on Xbox 360 and other Microsoft online properties.
...
If youre going to develop games for Xbox 360 and want to sell your game on Xbox LIVE Community Games, youll need a Premium membership. Its just $99 per year or $49 for four months." -- XNA Creators Club Online

In short, not exactly free. Nor entirely open. And it includes XNA lock-in, which seems to be more horizontally oriented. How about Apple and Microsoft work together towards a standard, open API and a standard, peer-review based store?

"For Windows game development, XNA Game Studio Express is completely free and built on top of the popular and powerful Visual C# Express. For Xbox 360 game development, you'll need to subscribe to the Creators Club and have a retail Xbox 360 with a hard drive." -- XBox Registered Developer Program

"As a Premium member in the XNA Creators Club, youll be able to submit any complete Xbox 360 game youve created in XNA Game Studio to the Creators Club community at http://creators.xna.com/ for peer review. Other Premium Creators will check to make sure your game is safe to play. If it is, youll set a price point between 200 and 800 Points that people will pay to download your game.

Once the game is reviewed and the price point set, youre done. The game is listed on Xbox LIVE Marketplace, and youll get an electronic payment every quarter, for up to 70% of the games total revenue in your own currency. Depending on your games success, you may even have your game advertised on Xbox 360 and other Microsoft online properties.
...
If youre going to develop games for Xbox 360 and want to sell your game on Xbox LIVE Community Games, youll need a Premium membership. Its just $99 per year or $49 for four months." -- XNA Creators Club Online

In short, not exactly free. Nor entirely open. And it includes XNA lock-in, which seems to be more horizontally oriented. How about Apple and Microsoft work together towards a standard, open API and a standard, peer-review based store?

Then for which platform should an indie game developer develop party games?

The XBOX 360. In an earlier post I mentioned the new Community Games part of XBOX Live that is specifically for indie developers. I'm told Sony has a similar initiative but I'm less familiar with it and I don't know if it's off the ground yet.

XNA offers a lot of potential for getting kids interested in programming.

XNA lets you develop and publish games on the Xbox 360 for $100/year.

I've looked into XNA and found that it doesn't really work with any language other than C#, just as J2ME phones don't work with any language other than Java. How should game logic be written so that it will work on multiple platforms, even those that have disjoint sets of available languages?

XNA lets you develop and publish games on the Xbox 360 for $100/year.

There's a really good thread about this on the Microsoft XNA game developer's forum:

http://forums.xna.com/forums/p/12407/65734.aspx

Worth reading for people who think their ideas are valuable and especially those who want help implementing them but are afraid to tell anyone about them for fear they'll be stolen.

If you want to work in a field where ideas have significant value then go into marketing or advertising, or become a short story writer.

In the software world:

1) Ideas have vanishingly small value. Only implementations of ideas are worth anything.
2) Everyone has more ideas than they could ever implement.
3) Chances are good that others already had your special idea many times before. Never ever get hung up on the idea that someone might, or has, stolen your idea. In general ideas themselves are not protectable or are not worth worrying about.
4) People do not steal unproven ideas, they steal proven ones. So tell everyone your secret idea because it might help you and won't hurt, and if you are successful then they're all going to steal your idea at that point anyway.
5) Nobody wants to write your software for you. If we're going to work on something then we're going to use our own ideas. If you like your idea then go implement it because NOBODY ELSE IN THE WHOLE WORLD IS GOING TO DO IT FOR YOU.
6) So get started. Making a beginning is half the battle. Don't just think and plan. Write some code. Produce some permanent artifact from your work every day.
7) Successful open-source projects start out as COMPLETE WORKING SYSTEMS written by the person or people who had the original "itch". Once there's something there that you can use then other people will start using it and then they'll want to make changes and enhancements. So don't expect any volunteer help until the project is already mostly "done" from your own point of view.
8) If you release a product using your idea, and someone else copies the idea and gets rich when you don't, then it's because they did a better job than you did and you need to get over it. If you sit around thinking that billion dollars should have been yours and they screwed you and you deserve more then it will totally destroy your life. The competition is not about who has the best cool sexy idea, it's about who can make the idea into something real and successful.

All ideas should be like supermarket coupons. They should have a little note at the bottom that says "cash value 1/100 of one cent".

G.

In addition to the above, I'd point out that XNA creator's club (link) is a great place to make turn your concept into reality -- assuming you're also planning on doing the actual implementation.

Most importantly: AFAIK, the creators club also provides a network where you can find other people interested in making the game, so for example, if you need another couple of coders, or an artist or somebody capable of doing sounds etc., creators club is probably the best place to find them.

From what I've been reading, MS has opened up their Live service to more indie developers. You can build the game you want and then sell it on Live, and they will take a cut. I don't know how profitable this is or any other ins-and-outs, but you can check out the details here.

Other than the fact that PC users can download and run games released as free software, freeware, or shareware, produced by any developer...

Build and distribute your games with XNA and Xbox Live. It's not free but the cost of membership is very cheap and the framework/compiler/tools are free.

Looks like you can download V2.0 here:

http://creators.xna.com/Education/GettingStarted.aspx


Yesfan001

But having said that,

"Look at XBox 360 dedicated games that are using the XNA and jumping off from a solid DX10 level engine, they blow cross platform games away in terms of FPS and quality."

Though I agree it is unlikely that we will see anything that really impresses the masses in dx10 till a 'dx10 from the ground up' engine is released, from a capable developer, it is my understanding that XNA, and even XNA2 does not have any DX10 capability, as the xbox 360 is not a dx10 capable device.

"As for XNA supporting DirectX 10, I haven't heard any plans of this, and would think it's unlikely since DirectX 10 is not supported on the Xbox 360, and XNA is focused on working on both Windows and Xbox." source (Bill Reiss - XNA MVP, posted 01-26-2008 so I believe it would be correct to assume this comment covers XNA2)

The rest of your post is very interesting however.

They haven't managed the same on their deliberately-closed XBox platforms, but Windows is as open as DOS was before it, and fantastic independent artistic game developers are thriving.

Have you looked at XNA? Check out the winners from the Dream-Build-Play contest, the top four of which should be making their way to XBLA soon.

Microsoft's XBLA and Sony's PSN are roughly comparable in terms of attracting indie developers, but once Microsoft figures out what they're doing with XNA you can say goodnight to Sony's network. The 360 will be the place to be for indie developers.

So taking into account the lockout chip business model that pervades the console market, how can a smaller developer reach gamers?

This is a question that Microsoft at least is taking very seriously. XBLA has been a great tool for introducing smaller, independent developers to the masses without requiring massive amounts of money (an XBLA title may cost upwards of $50-100K, which is very cheap compared to the multiple millions spent on many titles these days). For example, Ninja Bee now has several games on XBLA (Outpost Kaloki, Cloning Clyde, Band of Bugs, and Eets), a situation that would've been next to impossible on earlier consoles. Microsoft is also developing XNA for hobbyist/enthusiast game development, and the upcoming 2.0 version will finally add networking support for games on Xbox 360. Once that's in place, they just need a good way for non-developers to be able to play the games (right now it requires a $100/year subscription to run your games on the console).

Nintendo and Sony both have areas where they could expand support for independent developers (Wii Virtual Console, Playstation store), but they're nowhere near as far along with that as Microsoft is.

And if the dependency on kb/mouse is disappearing due to the use of Xbox 360 controllers with PCs (and the use of PlayStation controllers with PCs through EMS USB2 adapters before it), do you predict this will change soon?

Honestly, I see it going the other way around -- PCs will be relegated to hardcore gaming only, mainly simulations like Flight Sim, "professional" competition-type games, and grind-fest MMOGs. Every now and then you get some company that has the bright idea of turning a PC into a console (see the Phantom), but it generally never works out.

The other alternative is that game developers will continue porting games from consoles to PC, with the console-style control scheme intact. For example, Red Octane and Activision will be bringing Guitar Hero 3 to PC and Mac and will use the console-style USB guitars (most likely it'll be the same guitar as what's shipped for the Xbox 360). The problem with this approach is that PC players hate it when game companies port like that. See the outrage around Oblivion's "console interface", for example. The thing is, if you're targetting a 10-foot experience you want the "clunky" console-like UI for readability at a distance. Anyway, it's my belief that PC gamers who complain about console ports rather than being grateful that they got anything at all are the ones who will kill PC games. Why should Ubi, EA, 2K, or others bother shipping on the PC when they'd have to invest in significant UI redesign or suffer internet complaints?

XNA is similarly amazing and liberating if you've been slogging along in game development in C++ for far too long.

I think they would care: someone who only owns a Wii is going to buy a lot more Wii games than someone who owns a Wii and a 360.

Not necessarily true. First, keep in mind that the core gamer demographic is now in their mid- to late-20s and early-30s. That means disposable income. Second, the Wii's bread-and-butter games aren't going to be the same titles you find on Xbox 360 or PS3. I suspect you'll be seeing more titles like Wii Sports, WarioWare Smooth Moves, Rayman Raving Rabbids, Cooking Mama, Trauma Center, etc. "Gimic" games like these will be huge (just wait for DDR on the Wii where you have to dance on a pad and swing the wiimote at the same time!), and you won't be able to get them anywhere else but the Wii (forget the SIXAXIS, it's just not the same). By that same token, gamers will generally buy shooters or sports titles on the 360 or PS3 rather than the Wii because beautiful graphics and "traditional" gameplay just work better there. Finally, going back to the first point, Nintendo's sitting on a gold mine with their Virtual Console. They've got their entire back library of NES, SNES, and N64 games to capture the nostalgic 20-something gamers. 360's XBLA will give them a run for their money, but for every Symphony of the Night on XBLA (which rocks, BTW -- SOTN should be a 360 system seller) you'll be able to get a Mario Kart 64, Super Mario Bros., and Link to the Past on the VC.

How strange will it be if the "battle" for next-gen supremacy comes down to low-fi games on XBLA (and XNA), VC, and whatever Sony offers? People bought Wiis for Zelda: TTP, they'll buy 360s for Halo 3 and PS3s for MGS4, but the real win will be from cheap, accessible games you can buy (or build!) in the comfort of your living room.

They tried that at a GDC a few years back where they ended up giving a good number of the attendees free HD tvs. Do a google search for Greg Costikyan's GDC rant for a bit of what that resulted in. that being said, I'm pretty durn excited about XNA. I think that may change things going forward