Microsoft Announces XNA Game Development Platform

Thanks to GameSpot for its story revealing that Microsoft is unveiling its XNA game software development platform later this morning at the Game Developer's Conference in San Jose. XNA is "designed for use with future iterations of all Microsoft game platforms, including Windows, Xbox, and Windows Mobile-based devices" to make simultaneous platform development easier and cheaper, and the company is also expected to announce "Xbox Live-style functionality for billing, security, and matchmaking being made available to Windows developers... [and] the introduction of controllers that are compatible with all Windows and Xbox game players" as part of this move. IGN Xbox has an interview with Microsoft's Jay Allard and Dean Lester which explains XNA as being a cross-platform, evolving toolset that will ensure backwards compatibility, giving the example: "...[if] Adobe was writing an application for Win95, and then WinNT came out there were special features they could take advantages of -- they didn't have to throw it all away and start again." Update: 03/25 00:46 GMT by S : Microsoft has made the official XNA site public, including streaming video from unspecified next-generation games.

Comments

Compatible

[airrage]

Good, they can make xbox2 games backwards compatible!

Killing a game project

[tcopeland]

...from the Allard/Lester article:

We're seeing a lot of pressure on medium-sized developers today. And it's not just the little guys. We've killed projects internally that have been three to five million dollars in. That's not a little development team.

Jeepers. Killing a game after spending $3M on developing it? How does a game get that far only to be cancelled?

Re:Killing a game project

[dasmegabyte]

Well, if you put $3m into a game only to find a year later that you've got little beyond an engine and a premise that's overdone in the marketplace, and you'll need $10m and two years more before you could make enough back selling the game to cover costs, then you save $7m and a lot of uncertainty by cancelling the project and getting to work on some better use for that time & money.

Remember, the most important part of editing is knowing what to keep and what to throw away. If you just released every POS you put any effort into regardless of whether it was worthwhile or bug free...well, you'd be ValuSoft.

Cross Platform Ports

[evilmuffins]

I hope this doesn't come into widespread use for games, Deus Ex2 was designed for the xbox, and it shows when you play it on a Windows Pc.

Terrible concept.

[michael path]

So, basically, my understanding is that if I put together a solid DDoS exploit for Windows using XNA, it will affect XBOX and Windows Mobile devices?

Moreover, this sounds like .NET for games. .NET has yet to establish itself anywhere useful except as an architecture for Web Development. That's all back-end.

It reads interesting. I see it as vaporware. I can't imagine anything useful coming of this. How could something exploit the power of the next gen X-Box (which appears to be using a non-Intel chip in the future), and still run awesome on Windows?

And porting to mobile devices? One doesn't need to look any further than the slow adoption of the highly broken .NET Mobile Framework (where you can make calls to your heart's delight, but damned if they're implemented) to understand why this will never arrive as hyped.

The only interesting part is that you see people out in the game development sector (Gabe Newell of Valve, for example) excited about the technology. These are the type of people you'd expect to know better.

-m.

directx

[DreadSpoon]

Anyone remember that one? I don't think any games use it these days, right? ;-)

To be honest, this sounds rather useful, altho in an unfortunately "only for Microsoft developers" way. Porting apps between consoles and computers takes time, a lot of time, simply because portable toolkits don't exist, yet. Standard sets of game controllers between computers and consoles don't sound bad either, altho those have existed for some time.

Being able to write a game once, and with little modification have it running on both a PC and a console, is a Good Thing for developers and users. Lots of fun console games might start becoming available on the PC as well, for those of us that only need to own one game machine.

Of course, certain games will always remain best suited to a particular platform. i.e., playing an FPS with anything but a mouse and keyboard is just sick. Quit trying to make those damn things for consoles, will you? ;-)

Re:directx

[lowe0]

Really.

Only crappy games like Unreal Tournament 2004, Battlefield: Vietnam, Rainbow Six: Raven Shield, Max Payne 2, etc. use DirectX. We'll just ignore that one of the most anticipated titles, Half-Life 2, will use DirectX 9 to its fullest.

Nah, none of those are important. Let's all play Tux Racer instead!

Microsoft renames DirectX 10! What big news!

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft renames DirectX 10 - XNA and the crowd goes wild over nothing.

game development difficult at best

[192939495969798999]

I am surprised that more large companies haven't tried to make game development tools. There are a few things that nearly every game has, and that are really hard to do efficiently and quickly (the main game loop, for example). I honestly hope that Microsoft does make this and it does work, because that usually means some OSS people will make a knockoff that I can get for free and use, which will be awesome.

Alternate headline:

[drinkypoo]

"New DirectX: XNA"

All this is, is a new version of DirectX which they commit to making compatible across different flavors of windows (including possible WinCE devices) which also has Xbox Live functionality (I wonder if they'll roll it into Live or The Zone?) The DirectX SDK will be supplemented by these new tools they're talking about, and a new name will get stuck on DirectX.

It's not that it's an unwelcome advance, but it's not much of an advance. Frankly the thing I'm most interested in is "the introduction of controllers that are compatible with all Windows and Xbox game players" which says two things to me. 1> Microsoft will be releasing a controller which will work on Xbox and Xbox 2 (possibly with different pigtails) with a HID driver to match. Note that this might just be the controller S with an official HID driver. 2> The Xbox 2 will continue to use USB, no surprise there but always nice to see a confirmation.

Good move

[Dalcius]

Let companies make more money by making games easier to port, but at the same time lock them into a Microsoft based system.

Some gaming companies are keeping code portable in order to sell it on PC, PS2, XBOX, etc., and sometimes this leads to a Linux port. If you give management the tools to keep it on multiple platforms (albeit Windows-centric platforms) in half the time, I think it's safe to say that this is going to take a chunk out of potential Linux ports.

The only possible saving grace is that some companies will want to port their games to competing platforms like the PS2, but those games are likely to be console-oriented and as such not as well suited to a PC. Of course there are always exceptions.

MS is once again using it's market penetration to leverage more lock-in. Brilliant move on their part if you ask me.

Cheers

This got +5???

[Rew190]

Seems to me this is a distinctly unfair advantage over Sony or Nintendo, both of whom obviously do not have an OS to speak of and basically have only one platform to speak of.

So what you're saying is that because Microsoft is making it easier for it's developers to develop for all of its systems, it's a monopoly? It's somehow MS' fault that Sony and Nintendo don't have a computer OS?

I am no programmer, so perhaps this makes a lot more sense to someone else.

Ugh, how is this insightful, mods? No offense to the parent at all, just stupid moderators.

Anyone care to explain?

Absolutely. Basically, you said this: But isn't it difficult to co-develop for something that will essentially be an Apple box with something that is Windows?

You're assuming that what they're proposing is an "Apple Box" (not quite sure what that means). It's nothing fundamentally different from a developing standpoint, the platforms are running stripped versions of Windows. MS is just bringing unified functionality to all of these platforms.

It must be stressed that the news is merely that Microsoft is making it easier for developers of its platforms to cross-develop or be able to jump to another system without too much of a porting hassle. Think XBox2 to PC conversions and vice versa that are simple to implement. This benefits MS since they're now making it easier for developers to bring their games to other platforms which MS owns. PROFIT!