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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...
Good, they can make xbox2 games backwards compatible!
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
Jeepers. Killing a game after spending $3M on developing it? How does a game get that far only to be cancelled?
The Army reading list
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.
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.
IMO playing a game on different Microsoft operating systems isn't crossplatform... Please don't use crossplatform if you don't mean it.
Until they port directx to mac and linux, it'll be hard for them to use directx and be "crossplatform."
"Software will be the single most important force in digital entertainment over the next decade,"
I've always thought it would be the other way around. It always seems like hardware is usually the lacking component. I guess the quote is still true, given that even if hardware is behind, software drives the need for better hardware. But my main point is that it seems software can always be written to take advantage of, and even surpass hardware capabilities, so wouldn't hardware still be the single most important force?
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
Maybe this will allow things like Halo to not take so long flipping back and forth... And maybe I'll get my coveted cooperative play out of some future version of Halo. Mmmm.
I was eagerly awaiting the day Microsoft would become frustrated on their losses with the Xbox, and just try to gobble up the entire industry from the inside instead! Yes!
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?
.NET for games. .NET has yet to establish itself anywhere useful except as an architecture for Web Development. That's all back-end.
.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.
Moreover, this sounds like
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
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.
Let me guess: Microsoft, Microsoft and... hmmm more Microsoft?
Stéphane "Alias" Gallay
Now, where did I put this witty quote?..
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?
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?
Microsoft renames DirectX 10 - XNA and the crowd goes wild over nothing.
The more their console acts like a PC, has PC software, and generally offers the same look and sound of a PC title the more the console buyers will stay away. True, there are a few people who see a console as an alternative from buying a pricey computer and having to upgrade, but most console buyers are more interested in what consoles do that PC's can not do. Be it proprietary video hardware, to exclusive games. When a game is out on PC and a console, it is no longer is exclusive. This drove a lot of people away from buying XBox1 in the first place - Why bother getting a console to play games we already have on our PC that does a whole lot more?
If not, what does it stand for?
.NET or Java. Or even better, Visual Studio.NET XNA Edition, just for games (no ASP, ADO etc.), for free.
I hope this is thing is free, as in gratis, available at no cost to homebrew programmers. Could be cool in that case, and help it take off, similar to the free SDKs you can get for
On a seperate note, can we do something about the colour scheme for game articles? Even reverse video, popular on gaming sites, would be preferable to this.
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
billing, security, and matchmaking being made available to Windows developers...
Money, secure computing, and chicks - man, I want to be a windows developer! MS sure does take good care of their employees.
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
;-)
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
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.
stuff |
.. 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.
Serious yet funny 28 year old male Microsoft DirectX developer looking for cute and timid Microsoft Windows software engineer, between the ages of 25 and 30 with shoulder-length dark hair and pale blue eyes. Looking for a serious and caring yet professional relationship to share experiences and get yelled at by Balmer together. Must be willing to enjoy coding, Pepsi Blue, anchovis pizza, good thrillers and a little bit of DirectXXX, preferably in combination with any of the former. Serious inquiries only. Respond to article nr. 123456
Hate me!
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.
So id can compile Doom 3 for a P4/DX9/512MBDDR target, press a button, and it'll compile for a Nokia phone! I bet that'll work GREAT.
Sounds like the old CHIP8 games.
http://members.aol.com/autismuk/chip8/
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
If you are speaking "the Queen's English" then it is indeed correct to say "Microsoft are" because in this case "Microsoft" is logically the collective term used to refer to the people who work for the company. Since the nominative is plural, one uses the plural form of the verb.
Of course, we Americans don't usually see the people behind the company name but rather tend to personify the company as an individual rather than a collective, hence we are much more used to hearing "Microsoft IS a bad company" instead of "Microsoft are announcing a new piece of crap..."
MATCHMAKING?!?!
For the love of all that's holy, who entrusts their love life to the same firm that brought us Clippy and Bob?!?!
I guess you don't read Dilbert. Things REALLY ARE LIKE THAT in the real world.
And my dreams of one day playing my favorite 3d games on linux get crushed another notch down. Oh well, at least I have UT2004.
Happens all the time with software projects. Far better to kill the project at $3million down the tubes than $25 million down the tubes.
I worked as a consultant for a project at a big insurance company. After an estimated $25 million, 1 1/2 years, and 40 people assigned, they killed the project after determining that the vendor's product didn't work well enough to be used in production.
At my current company, we haven't thrown away that much money, but we've killed projects after 1 year of development when they should have been killed after 2 months of feasibility research. But, still better than sinking another year or two and then killing the project.
microsoft IS announcing, not ARE. Get over yourself.
That's where it all began, you know. Treating companies like people.
Aren't companies treated as plurals in the queen's English?
Nice one, American. Corrupt a language, then correct the people who still speak it properly.
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
I think he was making an allusion to the Win9x shell enhancement that came with NT4.
:-)
NT 3.5.x *was* out before Win95
[move
If Prince of Persia: Sands of time showed us anything, its that the ability to recycle large chunks of code for 4 different platforms results in amazing availability and quality gaming.
What, exactly, are you trying to say here?
(I'm not a programmer, so maybe im not following this properly)
Why oh why does every new product have to have the letter X in it? I find myself longing for the days of iEverything or eEverything.
Except for XML and Mac OS X, the X doesn't make any sense to me in any of the 48,000 "cool" products starting with X. Other letters are cool, too! How about M, B, or W?
C'mon! Innovate a little!
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
Personally I think Clippy and Bob is a match made in Hell. They truly deserve each other.
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.
Nah, they'll just charge you twice. Once for the controller, and once for the USB cable adapter.
So what is this going to be replacing DirectX? I like direct x. I see it as making nothing but half assed attempts at covering multiple systems. When instead they could make a superior product by focusing on one system.
Hold up, wait a minute, let me put some pimpin in it
introduction of controllers that are compatible with all Windows and Xbox game players
Wasn't it M$ that made the XBox controllers similar to USB but added an additional pin? Seems like they should start by adhering to standards.
Sounds like they're extending the deskop monopoly yet again. Even if it's a load of crap, a nice Billion dollar threat would help level the playing field. After all, will other game development systems that run on windoze be able to work with these new controlers? What about 3rd party controlers that Sony or Nintendo develop that could work with Windoze PC games as well? Will they not be required to support them?
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
Embrace and extend, baby! Embrace and extend!
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
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!
GREEN !!!!
So, it definitely works on the PC as well.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
Question: Why would I want to play console games on my PC? The last I checked console games were designed to be played with controllers and not keyboard+mouse and therefore limited to simplistic player interface with the games. E.g. compare NeverwinterNights's( designed for Xbox and PC ) dumbed down interface with the wonderfully complex ( but still easy to handle) interface of Baldur's Gate . Youll find that NWN is more diablo point to monster and click ti till its dead and baldur's gate is more let me quickly sift through my unbelievably large amount of options and quickly find the best one.
We've got both platforms, 95 and XP!
Two things.
1. I have no avid, passionate, deeply ingrained hatred for Microsoft, which, compared to people around slashdot, makes me a Microsoft whore. That said, doesn't this sound exactly like Microsoft is using the fact that most people use Windows on their PCs to further the Xbox2? Essentially, because of DirectX and Windows, MS seems to be considering the PC as a sister platform to the Xbox. 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. Seems to me this is dangerous ground for Microsoft to tread, particularly after all the stink in the US they just went through and the whole EU morass that they're going through now.
2. I am no programmer, so perhaps this makes a lot more sense to someone else. But isn't it difficult to co-develop for something that will essentially be an Apple box with something that is Windows? Maybe it's the whole virtual machine thing MS picked up, but it seems kind of unlikely to me. Anyone care to explain?
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.
In America, a company is legally a single entity or person. The issue is more legal than grammatical, and has nothing to do with corrupting English. Besides, we have no queen.
When XBox first came out, one of my main reason's for not buying one was that I had a computer, and any game that Microsoft releases for XBox would come to PC sooner or later. Not that I needed any more proof that I was right about that supposition, but making it easier to do cross-windows-platform development just shows that Microsoft has/had the same idea. John
Any real developer who hasn't drunk the Micro$oft kool-aid knows damn well that DirectXXX is just a thinly-disguised ripoff of fu-fme with a thin wrapper of vendor lock-in!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
xbox cord (errr cable) extender that is
<end/>
So, basically, my understanding is that if I put together a solid DDoS exploit for Windows using XNA
A DDoS against what exactly? Against individual machines playing these games (ie. using multiple machines to stop a person from playing a game)?
Against the server? If so, then these technologies are mostly irrelevant - servers are their own thing (and can be patched much more easily than a million clients).
Or were you thinking more about a compromising security exploit, rather than a DDoS? And, if you're confusing that kind of thing, do you want to reconsider insulting Gabe Newell for not knowing better? PS: What do you think Steam is?
From what I can see, this is mostly about making more things in gaming part of a standard gaming API. Both DirectX and the XBox Live tools have been very successful - and I could see MS being successful in expanding this strategy (both to more devices and more functionality). I don't know that it needs a new name - as it's not some big departure - but it sounds like good planning.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
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
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
I think one of the reasons they used a different connector is that they use a non-standard USB voltage. That was primarily due to them needing more power than the USB standard allows for.
In fact, XNA may make implementing Wine easier, as it will probably limit what programmers who have chosen to use XNA can do with APIs.
The problem with MS is that it so easily dominated the OS market it has to fish in every other market related to it. Gee another problem with a monoply, come on .gov, give us 50 baby MS's, one for each state, then lets see them compete :)
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!!!
Next thing you know, we'll have emacs users getting modded up. It's chaos I tell you! Anarchy!
WWJD? JWRTFA!
The XBox DOES use USB, but not the same plug style. There are products that let you convert an XBox controller to a standard flat USB plug. With these adapters and the right driver, you can connect the XBox controller to either a Windows or MacOS X computer.
The console business is about selling games, not machines.
Nintendo did it many times already and got away with it, reselling old classics revitalized to the new platform. Mario Kart, for instance, was a major hit for N64 and the game cube version was a best seller all over again. The Zelda series spawn over two generations of gamers already.
because, the same dev platform means only they are rebuildable, unless they are on entirely binary compatible environment such as .NET. I don't think game developers go managed code soon.
Usually there is little point in porting console games to PC or vice-versa. Different interface, different market. Sure we all fire up an emulator every now and then, but unless you have a USB gamepad that's really close to the console pad (or a native adapter), well it just doesn't feel right.
Tight handling is one of the most important aspects of game programming. If your jaw drops at the graphics & 5.1 sound but you can't aim for shiat using the d-pad, chances are that game disc will be found in the microwave rather soon. Prime example: Halo vs Turok Evolution (on XBOX). Halo plays great, the joystick aim is non-linear so you can let off more precise shots. Turok plays like shiat, impossible to aim adequately so you die young (and often). Same game on the PC would probably do OK thanks to the mouse.
It's like every other design paradox in the world: you have a limited set of resources that you have to deal with. In the game world this is called Tweaking. Playtest the game; if the mouse aim is awkward, throw in some clever interpolation to smooth it out. If gamepad aim is unruly, try some form of light auto-aim assistance to keep the player focused on progress rather than tedium.
Same thing can be applied to graphics. Stuff that looks good in 640x480 on a tv set will look chunky as hell and over-focused on SVGA, so we throw in some heavy AA and selective blurring.
Worse (in my opinion): Sound. TV sets have sucky paper-cone speakers chosen to adequately represent human voice. Bass/treble is typically weak and so you lose all the neat sound effects. You have to compress your sound to fit mostly within that limited bandwidth. Then there's the other end of the spectrum, people with bigass stereos. What sounded good on the 25" TV with stock speakers, now sounds like an Atari 2600 on the good system. Pan over to the gaming PC. It either has a semi-decent set of 2.1 or 4.1 speakers, so now not only do you want mid-bass but you also want surround effects. More headaches.
Multi-platform game development isn't a science, it's a labor of love. That, or a marketing ploy to pass on 3 poor products instead of one good one. If Microsoft has a solution to all this, they will become GODS whether we like it or not. They certainly now possess the experience and expertise on the topic, and it is a very strategic move to corner the exploding mobile entertainment market (games for non-gamers). They are not to be underestimated.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
So Gabe Newell of Valve is excited about the technology, but the average Slashdot user isn't and thus it's not a big deal? This is the kind of developer support that the Unreal Engine is known for. Why not push that support to the platform itself?
Linux: Free if your time is worthless.
People have been saying this would bring console controllers to PCs for ported-from-console games. But what about bringing your mouse/trackball and keyboard over to your XBox? You might lose some of the comfort of sitting on the sofa with a controller, but I'm sure many will find the accuracy in FPS games worth it. Of course, in online console FPS games, those who opt for the controller may find themselves second-class citizens.
Even absent bringing over your mouse and keyboard, it could lead to more innovative controllers. How about having a dual-stick controller for some games, and for other games a stick/trackball controller (or just throw two sticks AND a trackball one one if you can find the room).
Nuff said :)
This announcement comes with convenient timing for MSFT, I must say... considering this morning's earlier announcement that they're in Deep Stuff(TM) from the EU...
/FOIL HAT
I wonder, does MSFT have some kind of cache of these slightly-beneficial placating press releases somewhere, just waiting to be unleashed to cover up the latest bad news?
Or to put it another way, if the EC had ruled against MSFT three weeks ago, would we have seen this announcement coming from Redmond that afternoon instead?
Sounds familiar.
wbs.
Huh?
That was actually a Babylon 5 reference... Apparently to obscure for Slashdot ? I'm dissapointed
Blackmail's such an ugly word. I prefer extortion. The X makes it sound cool.
The way to corrupt a youth is to teach him to hold in higher value them who think alike than those who think differently
Here they are for a year and a half battling the changes for upcoming directX9. We already have a sinking PC game industry flooded with graphics card compatibility driver problems and API calls for directX8 games.
Now M$ is moving into another gaming project. I find it hard to believe that M$ has infinite resources.
Do you need some help?
- Yes, please find someone as desperate as me.
- Yes, please help me develop some good pick up lines.
- Yes, please find someone with the following fetishes:
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[OK] [Cancel]
And people say that Microsoft doesn't innovate. =)
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.
.NET or even read up on it? Did you know the next version of Windows is using .NET entirely, replacing Win32? Even the latest betas have explorer.exe running as managed code.
.NET is here to stay. I wonder what Slashdotters will have to say three years from now when it is absolutely everywhere. You can program it in any language (the Common Language Specification means all languages will produce the same intermediate code), it's portable, it's secure, and it's going to be the technology Longhorn is based on. Deal with it.
Has yet to establish itself anywhere? Have you ever used
I guess you also forgot the Mono project. Seriously,
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!
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.
I own a PS2 and won't ever buy an XBox Why not??
I'm not trying to start a holy war here, I'm genuinely curious as to why you don't want a X-Box. Is it b/c of its association with the Evil Empire? Did the lack of significant competition for the original PS ruin you for other systems? Or is there some other (possibly better) reason?
I used to want nothing to do with the X-Box simply because it was a M$ product. The first step on my path to recovery was finding out that Microsoft Games doesn't seem to suffer from the same failings as Microsoft itself does (I'm speaking of course about the world domination and the buggy software). I rented an X-Box with Halo and saw the graphics, and upon researching found that one of the geniuses behind the graphics engine for the console was Michael Abrash, the Almighty. The graphics on the X-Box are stunning. The best example I've found so far is the camera panning in Voodoo Vince (a hilarious outing from Beep Industries), it is flawlessly smooth and the environments are simply stunning.
I've also found that some people don't play X-Box because PS2 has more games. I cannot deny that, however, the vast majority of PS2 games are fighters, racers and sports games. Fighting games are fine, even my GF plays them, but in reality, once you've played one, you've played them all (and besides, Soul Calibur II for X-Box has Spawn). Racing games are right out as I don't even enjoy actually driving, why would I enjoy virtual driving (the exception is Simpson's Road Rage which, for those of you who haven't played it, is a campy outing putting a mixture of GTA and Crazy Taxi into a Springfield setting). Sports games... *sigh* why would I stay inside on the couch pretending to play football when I could grab a couple of friends and actually go play football... X-Box gives me the adventure games I crave and the RPGs that I love.
These are my reasons, but I'm still interested in hearing why people will/will not play the X-Box over the PS2 (I'll just pretend that the LameCube doesn't exist for now *Grin*).
The chains are broken
Loki is free
Ragnarok is at hand...
No other letter can compete with X, certainly not a VOWEL. Innovate all you want, but let me X-PLAIN...
;)
Sex - it's almost all X, except for the curvey S parts, and that voyeurist silent e. uh huh, huh huh
eXciting, eXploding, eXterminating - Like ninja's who have real ultimate power.
Letter X - Once you get to this letter there you can relax because your almost done with the alphabet. It's a letter that even looks like a throwing star! If you dis the letter X again ninja's will apear and chop your damn head off!
XXX - Porn or alchohol? It's up to you!
xXx - A little different, but he's like this buff snow board, uzi totin, snow boarding bald dude that really cares deep down about cars and his country and blowing shit up, but not bosses so he's cool.
Triple-X - another different big sweaty guy who pretends to kick peoples asses for a living, but doesn't blow shit up. This one's not bald, but I bet people in the front row wish he was when his long hair flips sweat on them.
XXX - super rare genetic condition where someone is all girl and then some, probably like the powder puff girls.
Chemical X - yeah that's it Powder puff girls. Bubbles, Blossum, and Buttercup. Find the Marilyn Mason Remix.
X - Sign here please, or even I'm to damn lazy to sign my own name. The all-time official winner of Tic-Tac-Toe.
Malcom X - like asterisk it's a wildcard - it can mean anything you want it to mean, or that it doesn't matter. Or that your cool and pissed off.
eXtreme [sports|games|etc|X] - extreme anything. Exterme sports, extreme sailing, extreme grocery shopping. Do something wild and crazy to get a thrill. Now even wearing helmets is cool!
Base X - roman numeral for our standard number system. Uh... The simpsons had Bart almost get eaten by a lion because of this roman numeral thing.
XXX - Roman numerals for when people become OLD. Until next year when it will be changed to XXXX
Programming - For loops always use X. It's a law or something.
Math - the whole horizontal part of the 2D co-ordiate system. Without X all graphs would be straight up and down lines. Y is nothing without X.
Generation X - Lazy good for nothing little bastards who can suddenly vote, buy cars and even video game systems. I think I may even be one of them.
XeroX - the coolest company in the freakin WORLD! I mean they START and END with X!!
eX-laX - Helps you out when you don't want to be full of shit anymore
XML - Extensable Markup Language. Could have been EML but then no one would have used it because that's just not COOL.
XBOX is the most incredible piece of hardware because they have 2 X's which implies they some how cram all that X goodness in that big ugly box.
So to summarize...
X is cool, X rocks, X MARKS THE FUCKIN SPOT!
(:D bring on the ex-lax responses)
It could be worse that Bob and Clippy. It could think that you're gay (or straight if you are gay) and automatically sign you up for some VERY incompatible dates.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
...gaming is next to be rearranged by OSS and ultracheap top quality stuff. As I said the other day.
Unless MS comes forward with DX9 and some good tools for Linux I don't see this taking off.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
It's not the money that's the issue. Microsoft can heamorhage whatever it wants on XBox and XBox2, and it won't notice. It's the marketshare / mindshare that they're after.
:-P
If Microsoft tells everyone that they make good console systems, eventually people will believe it.
Everyone except me, of course.
Besides, Microsoft will never admit that they were unable to corner a tech-related market. They can't back out now!
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. --Ford Prefect
As far as I can tell, reading between the lines, this translates to "We are going to put out more tools that allow easier porting between the XBox and Windows."
There was a lot of what sounded like flufft, but it seems like this is the actual, practical change.
May we never see th
I suspect they may not sell their product in Europe...
The software is a bundle of different game-engine parts. Why would you buy an engine part from a competitor, when you already bought it (or maybe received it for free by you xbox dev kit?) from Microsoft?
GNU guru and mainframe hacker
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?
Is it Microsoft's fault that Sun didn't have a widely used OS? Netscape's? Yet, MS had to pay up. This situation seems remarkably similar to me, and you didn't really clarify why it's not.*
You're assuming that what they're proposing is an "Apple Box" (not quite sure what that means).
The SDK was released on Apple boxe (sorry, machines). Not sure how much more Apple-y one can get short of booting up with a quaint "ding." (See here). I'm curious, where did you see that Xbox2 is even running on "stripped versions of Windows"? The Xbox1, yes. Xbox2, I'm not so sure, and the Xbox2 was what this article was directly referring to.
* For the record, I thought the case against Microsoft was merely an attempt for states and other companies, who would've done the same thing had they been given the chance, to snag some cash. Still, I'm not sure how this is any different than taking advantage of the fact that your OS is far more distributed.
As a hobbiest who likes to program in DirectX, I'm rather excited about the XBox live style functionality. It might not matter much for a big company, but if you're just one guy coding up a game by yourself, being able to offer that kind of multiplayer support is a godsend. Ironically, Microsoft may be actually helping out the little guy for once. These tools could make it a lot easier to create indie games (If you don't mind the awful DirectX style interface, that is).
The one thing that keeps Nintendo alive (other than diehards like me) is that their games are exclusive to their console. In a discussion the other day I couldn't point out one must-have (non-sports) Xbox game that was exclusive to that system. Splinter Cell? It's on everything. MS put Halo on the PC themselves. MGS2 and GTA are PS2 leftovers. Now MS is making it easier to cross-develop? I mean Xbox PC has always been sensical, but does it make sense logistically for MS?
Schnapple
heh. just try to get access to the XBOX development kits if you are Joe Schmoe in a garage. MS tightly controls who can develop and who gets the kits. Unless XNA drastically changes something, you can forget about getting the xbox tools unless you are an established game development house. They have a reason for this, to prevent a deluge of crappy games diluting the platform, but it still means that the statement that they want to see garage shop games is bogus.
from xbox.com
If Valve is excited about this technology in terms of combining the power of PCs and consoles... I'll bet that Gabe Newell is looking forward to using XNA to get Steam into the broadband-enabled console market, as well as *anything else* with enough bandwidth and power to run content. Whether or not it works, the concept has a lot of promise for any group working on next-gen content delivery by expanding the markets they can target.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
I doubt this strategy is for the best for Microsoft. When the Xbox came out, a lot of people dismissed it as a PC you can't upgrade - so why buy it?
The reason was theoretically Xbox-only games, but Halo is on the PC, and GTA was on the PC first. XNA will make games even less likely to be exclusive to Xbox, and if they are, not for long. So why bother getting an Xbox at all?
As for whether XNA itself will be any good - the WinG -> DirectX argument is exactly right. It's generally understood Microsoft does "Piss-poor till Version 4." Look at DOS, Windows, Word, Internet Explorer... the 4th version (regardless of how they number it sometimes) is the great one. A lot of game developers really like Microsoft's game development tools.
After version 5 they get lazy and flag out, so that's down the road too.
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.
cut the xbox cord before the breakaway connecter, cut an old usb cord open, connect the wires that are the same color, connect the yellow one to the bare usb wire, download the xbcd controller drives for windows and *poof* controller for xbox and windows...
buy a cheap xbox cable extender and you didn't even waste a controller.
<end/>
I'm an idiot, but i've blogged some thoughts on this. Can anyone tell me why this would be such a bad idea?
I've been waiting all day to finally get to post this. I hope I haven't missed my window.
PC games are DIFFERENT than Console games. They are different starting at the point someone writes down the concept on a piece of paper. They are difference LONG before you get to the question of what 'platform' they are going to be released on. (Except that it's inherent in the initial concept, what a paradox.)
When you have a successful Console port of a game, such as KOTOR, it's because you were developing two games at the same time. A PC game and a Console game. Some people accomplish it. Most people don't. Most people develop one type of game, (usually console) and then release it for the PC. It doesn't work that way. 90% (fake statistic) of console ports fail. The same goes for PC games that are ported to consoles. It just doesn't work. The players of the two types of games just want different things.
Now, if they made a product where you could write a game, and push the magic button and spit out a PS2 disk, an Xbox disk, and a Gamecube disk, that would be excellent.
Even better, if they had a machine that could spit out a Windows disk, a Mac disk, and a Linux disk, the world could rejoice. PC games work excellently on different types of "Personal Computers" (except that freaky one button Mac mouse). Also, console games work excellently on different types of consoles.
However, a PC game doesn't work on a console, and a console game isn't enjoyed on a PC. There's a paradigm shift there that doesn't automatically transfer.
With excellent game design and supervision you can create a game that's good in both 'paradigms,' However, making an API that allows any Tom Dick and Harry to make their latest brain fart cross-platform isn't going to encourage that kind of effort.
I'm also worried about the "Live" stuff they talked about. We already have "GaySpy Arcade" trying to ruin the way PC gaming works online. If the same kind of thing becomes to inseperably tied to DirectX then online PC gaming could start to really suck.
--Welcome to the Realm of the Hawke--
Great! Now I have to throw away my pedals, yoke, stick and wheel and use a freakin' gamepad to fly or drive on my PC.
Well, there's no money to be made in simulation games anyway (The Sims excepted).
It is, sort of. My reading of the article has lead me to believe that the XNA kit will allow a game to be developed once, and run on the XBOX, XBOX-2, or PC platforms. If that's true, then XNA is a bit more than a re-marketing of the DirectX family of technologies. It would also include all the DRM necessary for a XNA compliant game, cross-compilation for the XBOX-2 deployments, a new hardware abstraction layer that can deal with the XBOX-2 hardware (assuming it's not written already), etc. etc. etc.
It's probably a good thing for gamers because now I'm guessing we'll see more simultaneous releases for the PC, XBOX, and XBOX-2. Another thought, it may allow gamers to upgrade to an XBOX-2 without leaving behind their existing investment in XBOX games (though there has been speculation about Virtual PC filling those shoes already - heck, maybe that will become part of XNA?).
This is a very "Microsoft-ish" kind of move. They truly are masters of the product integration game and it's the one thing they innovate at better than anyone else. If they do this right, I think they're going to please game developers tremendously.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
If Sony or Nintendo were to goto to Microsoft and say we'd like to license parts of Window's so they could do the same. Microsoft would say they were SOL. Sony or Nintendo has no way competing or countering that you can develop games for windows and the xbox2 with very little change to the code to publish the game on either platform.
Remember Microsoft has a monopoly in the PC desktop market and this can be viewed as unfair advantage if Microsoft were to refuse Sony or Nintendo if they wanted to license that code from Windows.
I own all 3 consoles and play PC games and I'm all for cutting down development costs but if this is going to let Microsoft bully their way in to gain marketshare I'm not for it.
So far Sony has handed Microsoft their asses and heads on a silver platter. It's time to see if Microsoft can actually gain market share without using Windows as leverage.
PC devs still use the Direct X SDK
XBOX devs still have to buy and use the XDK
It (needs) uses visual studio. (NET) ... although remembering what they did with directplay (80% of gamedevs use plain winsock instead of that mess) Im glad they havent.
what is new here?
This is just a Software Bundle of 3 "different" products. MS claims you are going to be able to code in dx9 choose a different configuration and use the same code in xbox (WHICH is sadly not true, if xbox2 doesnt have a hdd and a multi processor) But chances are if you have the XDK you are already doing exactly the same, Theres nothing new here.
If MS actually wants a bite of middleware, they should look at renderware, and throw their own ready to use engines (physics, AI, sound, rendering) and tools to their XDK and charge it
Go ahead MOD my day!
More opinions here
...but as I actually RTFA, the bit that interested me the most was this:
Imagine the RTS game on the PC where you're the general and you're deploying troops and managing resources. The guys on the console are the troops, playing a real-time action/adventure game. They're going out and beating each other with clubs or storming the castle
Scepticism of actually being able to implement that aside, that would be fucking cool.
Is it Microsoft's fault that Sun didn't have a widely used OS? Netscape's? Yet, MS had to pay up. This situation seems remarkably similar to me, and you didn't really clarify why it's not.*
Solaris? Anyhow, I know what you're getting at, but you implied that because MS is making it easier for developers to do cross-platform development it will somehow further MS' monopoly. Yes, MS has a monopoly, but how is this is a contributing factor? Because it's squashing competition by making things easier for the developers?
I'm curious, where did you see that Xbox2 is even running on "stripped versions of Windows"
It's pretty much just common sense, to tell you the truth, no text needed. XBox uses some sort of DirectX, which has been a work in progress for years. The PC developers are familiar with it (which was one of the big draws of the XBox initially) and there's no way that MS is going to scrap all the progress they've made. Besides, look at the OS' of the other two systems this is for: Windows CE, Windows XP, and... hmmm.
I suppose I shouldn't have said "Windows," per se, but at least the fundamental framework that would support directx. It's a stripped down Windows. Nothing else would really make sense. Really, do you think they're going to go with Unix or something?
- Integrate with a game where you have a knife. ;-)
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Really. Have you checked?
Because if you had, you would know that it uses a DirectX 8 renderer on Windows, with the OpenGL renderer as a backup for Windows or as a primary renderer on Linux and Mac. The reason why the DirectX renderer is used on Windows is because it takes advantage of DirectX shaders. (Note that the OpenGL API is also capable of shaders, but they are not used in this case.)
The Windows version has at least one other feature that didn't make it to the Linux and Mac versions - speech recognition. I don't know about you, but I'd rather not play a also-ran version of a game when I could be getting the full experience on another platform.
In the future, please do your homework before you go randomly flaming someone on the internet.
Anything written for a PC's AGP bus would run faster on the PC, certainly. But code written for an Xbox that depended on its unified memory, e.g. using SSE to manipulate/collision-detect/etc with vertices that the GPU can then read directly, would be harder to do efficiently on a PC.
Maybe when PCIe is here.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
This is only going to hurt game development.
Why? Because development of games towards multiple targets is going to favour developing for the lowest common denominator. Games will be targeted to run within the resolution capabilities, or memory requirements, or storage requirements of the minimal system -- likely the console; instead of specifcally taking advantage of the resources which a powerful PC can offer.
Games will be targeted to the limited set of buttons on the console controllers, when keyboards can offer additional control and complexity.
We've seen this very same thing before. Think back to when the Voodoo cards were popular. Games were developed only to the specific texture sizes and video resoultions these games offered; so even when more powerful cards were available from other vendors, many games weren't able to benefit from the power. Likewise, all the CGA games that were still coming out even when some people had VGA/EGA capability.
This may help developers, but it can only hurt consumers.
I just came back from GDC, and this wasn't a major topic, except in Microsoft-sponsored sessions.
The big thing at GDC seemed to be games for cell phones. But they're mostly old games from about two generations back, resized for the small screen. We're not, for example, seeing games that use player location information, or involve play in the real world. Cell phone games remain time-fillers.
At the high end, the graphics continue to get better, but the game ideas remain the same. ("What makes this different from Everquest?") Everything is slightly better ("Now, 7 channel sound!" "Our audio compressor does voice chat with less bandwidth". "Our tree generator now does flowers, roots and grass!". "Now, with 64 bits!") but nothing looked like a breakthrough. The conference seemed smaller than two years ago.
The Really Big Seamless World problem seems to be under control. Level of detail and regioning are now in good shape, not just for graphics but for AI and physics. (If nobody is in the forest, do trees still fall? No, but if you go there, things may have changed since you were there last.) It's not all perfect yet in shipping games, but the major problems have been solved. Planet-sized virtual worlds work. But they're less interesting than people expected before they worked.
Technically, I'm interested to see that somebody finally got implicit integration to work for game physics. I spent some time on that problem in 1998, and made some progress, but the performance wasn't better than explicit integration. Somebody seems to have gotten past that problem.
i totally agree with that. i loved the first 'deus ex' and waited so long for second one, but it was a disappointment...
I think that the first one has even better graphics at some scenes god damn it.
class he-man extends man!
Read the article summary: they said it was cross-platform!
;)
So im waiting for a linux version.
"...a generation of kids has grown up thinking Trance is the shittiest music since country and western." - Paul van Dyk
To the Linux Community: "You shall not pass!"
"...a generation of kids has grown up thinking Trance is the shittiest music since country and western." - Paul van Dyk
...but I'd rather not play a also-ran version of a game when I could be getting the full experience on another platform.
And how much did you pay for this feature? Depending on which version of Windows you use, could be upwards of hundreds of dollars.
Huh?
Let's assume MS could crank out a new Windows update every two years. (They're frequently late.) Let's also assume you need every single update, instead of running something reasonably current (say, Win2k.) Finally, let's recall that the upgrade price for the professional version of WinXP was $200.
A hundred bucks a year, to be able to run the versions of cross-platform apps that get the most developer resources, seems like a small price to pay. Whether that money pays for Windows, Linux, or even BeOS, I could care less - I'm only in it for the apps.