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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.
Anyone remembers winmm ?
Anyone remembers winG ?
Guess this will end up just as useful...
well most games ive played on a pc which use gamepads, seem clunky and ill designed. but maybe this will stop bad console to pc ports (HALO) from happening. theres nothing i hate more than seeing options in an options menu which have been greyed out because they were there from the console version.
If Deus Ex 2 showed us anything its that the ability to recycle large chunks of code for two different platforms results in substandard fare. Is this the begining of homogenised PC / Console products which are not optimised for either audience or hardware?
The internet makes me stupid.
I am not a games developer, so I don't know what all else has to be taken into account for a "gaming development platform" aside from advanced graphics, but I presume that this is going to involve gobs of .NET and XML. Just as the future of .NET apps includes XML Application Markup Language (XAML), will we soon be seeing a similar markup scheme for games -- perhaps even called XGML?
Unfortunatly, the XBox 2 will not be backwards compatible with original XBox games. This could potentially really hurt XBox2 sales I would think. When GT3 came out for PS2, I debated getting one. I eventually opted to buy one on the basis that even though it was expensive, I could play GT3 and some of my old PS1 games to tide me over.
It's funny that MS, who is now looking for compatibility and ease of porting won't have the XBox2 be able to run XBox games.
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
Microsoft is supplying their game-developement-platform. Is there any hope of a competing OSS platform? I know there are some tools out there, but OSS is generally quite anemic when it comes to gaming blood.
Well, I think even as a learning tool it would be awesome. If I could write & run X-Box code on my PC, that would be an excellent way to learn the system. Sure, it might not run as fast, but at least you could see the code in action and fiddle with it.
Another benefit is that other companies may be forced to take similar approaches. Is there Nintendo-approved Game Boy development kit for the PC? Or a program that lets mere mortals compile PlayStation2 code?
... to the rumours that the X-Box 2 will not have a HD? If MS are really aiming to make their latest dev cross-platform, the X-Box 2 would need to have a hard disk in order to be comparable to the PC.
Not necessarily. Flash memory being what it is (ie cheap and plentiful), all you'd really need to do is put version 1.0 of the XNA framework on ROM and push patches/bugfixes to a 64MB slice of flash on the system.
Of course, this being MS, you'd probably need a hell of a lot more than 64MB...
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
I am probably the minority opinion here (I own a PS2 and won't ever buy an XBox), but gamers will be benefiting most, because the Windows and console platforms will be more likely to get the same games, rather than just exclusive for one platform over another. Microsoft will be able sign development houses to exlusive XNA development contracts, in addition to exclusive XBox or PC contracts. Gamers get more games on both platforms. Gamers get games that can play against each other on either platform with the joint networking code. Gamers get features that are accessible to both platforms.
.NET for gaming platforms. No matter what platform you write for, you have a standard you can code against and rely on for the future.
Developers win because they don't have to learn and develop with two separate middleware products. One set of middle-ware means standardized development that saves time and money. Developers can spend more time designing and implementing games rather than struggling with the platform's issues and quirks. I see XNA like the Java or
With XNA, the Windows PC and the XBox will be both first-class citizens. Everyone wins, including MS.
While there are a few exceptions, XBox/PC cross platform games are not normally the best idea.
Good PC games are written with the PC in mind. The type of game, the interface, the use of keyboard and mouse, and generally the depth is much greater on a PC.
The XBox's strength, OTOH, is generally more geared towards action, platforming and relaxing on your couch with a controller.
Just because a game can be released on two platforms doesn't mean that it will be equally as good on both.
A talking gecko.
Seriously, it's just DirectX in a wig and a dress. Microsoft rolls out a new gaming API every year and a half anyway, often breaking games that used to work on the previous version of it. This is just another one. Sadly, it will force all developers to learn a new API without any real advantages to doing so - porting a game from the PC to the XBox is more than just recompiling. Usually you have to start from scratch, and try to save as many art resources as you can. It is very rare that you'll be able to start with a game engineered to use essentially unlimited resources and then shoe-horn it into a relatively tiny space (a console). It's all spit and polish, but no real substance.
OpenGL and SDL are still the only way to obtain true cross-platform compatibility - not being able to cross-compile for Linux and Macintosh cuts you out of about 15% of the market, and that's TODAY. In a year and a half, when any game project started today would ship, the ratio's going to be a lot more heavily weighted in favor of Linux and OSX, possibly as much as 20%. This is too great a portion of the total market to be ignored, so the smart developer will use tools that will let him access that extra 20% of the market to allow him to get the most out of his development
(and distribution) dollar.
Developers, beware of quick acceptance of bright shiny objects!
Standard sets of game controllers between computers and consoles don't sound bad either, altho those have existed for some time.
;-)
Though they've existed mostly as converters to make the non-standard USB connectors on consoles work in the standard USB connectors on PCs, along with some driver hooks in some cases.
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?
Of course who says the game controllers will only go one way? As it stands, MS already has converters to use keyboards with the XBox, it's only a small step to make their entire line of keyboards and mice work on the XBox, and helps with the whole convergence of the PC in the living room if you can just use the XBox as a pass-through to your Windows-based computer sitting in whatever you have for an office space in your home. As it stands now, I'm looking at building a Linux box to hook up to the TV which will hold all of my media files and be accessed by my Windows-based gaming PC, which is certainly something MS should see as a failure on their part to provide something the customer wants (since XP Media Center doesn't do everything I want to do on my TV).
-PainKilleR-[CE]
XBox Live style addtion to next-gen DirectX (Oh, sorry, XNA). This translates to OS-level CD-Key checks and other 'game calls home to see if it may run'-features for *SURE*. Next we get to pay monthly fees for simple head-to-head gaming.
And developers will scream in joy and jump into the bandwagon. Especially if same libraries are used in XBox2, so porting PCXBox2 will be easy.
Oh, and we get XBox controllers to PC. Well, on some level it's good - lots of great console-style games suck on PC due to non-standard joypads and/or keyboard-based controls. However, the day they start making PC First Person Shooters that *require* a crappy gamepad to play is the day I go berserk and feed the stupid joypad to the MS loonies.
Everyone else would just write nice portable C, but MS will be determined to do it in the most arse-about-face way possible :-)
"This is your life, and it's ending one second at a time."
It may not be popular (yet) on PC/Mac/Linux/whatever environments, but portable toolkits do exist in the video game industry. Renderware is an example of a modular toolkit that is used to make a game that can be ported to several consoles. Just recently, Sega's Sonic Team used it for a high-profile cross-platform project you might have heard about, it's called Sonic Heroes :p . This is getting increasingly popular because of market issues. EA, Konami, Namco, Capcom and many others use this kind of cross-platform toolkits because it can cut development time by an order of magnitude when they want their products to be launched to a wider, multi-platform market.
This is also a problem for the console manufacturers, as they want to push their own, proprietary toolkits and get exclusivity for as many important titles as possible. This is why Microsoft is going to push this XNA thing very hard, it wants developers to stay inside the DirectX world.
Cross-platform, feature-complete, strongly supported APIs and toolkits are a big necessity in today's marketplace to comply with the very high standards the video game industry demands.
By the way, I'll start my little rant about OpenGL. I love the thing very much and it used to be great, but I'm really sad to see it's very outdated now and it doesn't reflect current game developers' needs, for example, fragment shaders support is something not well defined yet and it's a market requirement, you can't just port games from Windows and not support fragment shaders. Then there's the thing about OpenGL supporting SO MUCH F'ng more than just games-related functions (the API is still very strong in the professional apps space), remember the API subset some games had during the Voodoo era? This is also a requirement for today's games, a lightweight, full-featured API without unnecessary bloat.
To make matters worse, OpenGL doesn't include equivalent cross-platform audio and input APIs/toolkits, so you need to rewrite these parts for each new platform, or create your own API (and you still need to write support for it in every platform), or maybe look for some of the half-baked efforts out there.
Here's the reason DirectX smokes everybody else: We don't have a good cross-platform alternative to game development.
id Software, however industry-leading it may be, can't sustain our only true cross-platform open API in existence alone forever.
- Otaku no naka no otaku, otaking da!!!
Remember that Microsoft brought Virtual PC, which soon will be able to emulate Windows on G5 class processors, which could be used for backwards XBox compatibility (not saying that Microsoft will do this, but it is an option).
Disclaimer: IAAGPDFXAPC (I am a game programmer developing for Xbox and PC)
Most of this is just hype. It's all well and good to have a common base on mulitple platforms (which, as many have pointed out, is exactly what DirectX currently provides), but the dream of writing it once and having it work great on Xbox and PC is foolish.
I'll cite just a few reasons. The UI needs to be completely different, and once you start bringing "Xbox Live style functionality" into the mix, UI becomes a very big deal indeed. Also, we all know the classic tradeoffs of speed vs memory. On the PC you're probably looking at 256-512 megs of sys ram, plus 64 of vram, and if you go over that, things get a bit choppy. On the Xbox you get 64 total, and if you go over that you crash and can't ship. Those tradeoffs need to be completely different. I can only imagine the changes once you extend this to mobile phone gaming.
It sounds, though, like this is more about making middleware and tools common on both platforms, which would be pretty nice. Not having to re-write XACT for the PC build would be helpful, and PIX is one of the most amazing graphics analyzers I've seen.
In the end, mostly hype since they need a big GDC push, but there are some nice things burried in there.
Exactly. They 0wn the desktop market at about 90-95%. Of course, about 90-99% of games are for Windows, and a vast majority of those games are written in Microsoft's DirectX. Microsoft is using the developers' familiarity with their systems to get them to port their games to the XBox, handhelds, and smartphones where MSFT does not yet have a monopoly.
This will likely bring an influx of games for XBox and the handhelds from Windows game companies and individuals, which will help push the application market towards Microsoft dominance.
Users will select the Microsoft platforms since their favorite games (and an ever-increasing portion of games) can be ported to the platforms with relative ease, increasing Microsoft's purchased-systems marketshare.
Of course, with more and more systems purchased, more and more apps will be developed for the Microsoft platforms, and we have the same conditions we have on the Microsoft desktop: apps are written for Windows because people use Windows because the apps are for Windows.
If similar "cross-platform" systems are developed for other userspace applications, similar cycles will follow and the monopolization process will be greatly accelerated. (.NET is such a system)
End result if the above is correct: Microsoft PDA, smartphone, and game console/media center monopolies just like their desktop monopoly.
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.