Microsoft's Real Plan For XNA Gaming Domination?

h0tblack writes "While many have heard about the XNA 'game software development platform' from Microsoft's announcements at GDC earlier this year, the full scope of their plans are only just becoming clear. Eurogamer has a surprisingly candid interview with J Allard covering the latest plans from Redmond. XNA isn't a rehash of DirectX tools for the Xbox2, PC and WinCE devices after all, it's a full-on assault on the gaming world, with the prize being complete dominance of the market. The site also has a BitTorrent of the interview, since it was originally recorded in video form."

Comments

Better hurry

[elasticwings]

Now is the time, if any, for people to start making games work in Linux as best as possible. If something isn't done soon, all the gaming manufacturers will start building games to work with this system and make them completely unusable in Linux.

No longer will be a locked down platform

[ahg]

The article's author hints that Microsoft's XNA will almost be a "gaming OS". A set of standards that various consumer electronic companies can build consoles for.

This will bring to console gaming the unreliability of the Desktop PC. An often cited benefit Apple has over the PC platform is that it knows its hardware. There are no wild cards. Console game developers have been able to count on this until now. You test and test, on a given company's box and you know your good.

If XNA takes off, look for crashes, due to one Manufacturer cutting corners, or another trying to add a beefier new edition of some chip.

There are some things where standards are great, and being able to commoditize the hardware is a great benefit to consumers. On the other hand gamers, who as a whole have demonstrated a willingness to spend for top of the line systems every few years are probably not looking for a less expensive systems at the cost of quality.

No doubt odds are in favor of something like this winning the mass market. In the mass market, the commodity item always succeeds, VHS over Meta, PC over Mac, etc. _However_, one of the console system may yet survive this if they can succeed in filling a niche in for a superior gaming experience that only a few percent of the market care about and build a fiercly, loyal following. -- Just as Apple Computers exists today.

I'm skeptical.

[tukkayoot]

Though some of his ideas sound cool, I have a few questions/doubts about it:

1) How would it be different from Windows? If it's just a set of standards, protocals, and software that can run on a ton of different types of hardware, how exactly is it different from Windows, or Linux? Is the console release cycle replaced by incremental PC-style upgrades? If so, I'd have to mark that has a huge disadvantage. I do not want to have to upgrade my console system. I don't particularly that every 2-5 years I drop another $150-200 on a new console and peripherals, if I don't have to spend $500 and build an entire machine every several years. The beauty of console systems is that they Just Work, no having to check "system requirements", no driver conflicts, ect. Far from creating a "standard" for developers to follow to improve game stability, ect., they now are encouraged to write code that may run on multiple platforms.

2. Do we really need to play Halo on a cellphone, hand-held game console, PDA and refridgerator? For some games I could imagine that having some functionality/interaction with the actual game would be nice, but I would fear this would become a serious distraction to developers who often seem to have a difficult time just creating a single stable, fun game. Even with a set of "standards" being introduced, it's more work for the developer to build the kitchen sink into their game. I question how many gamers would actually have the time and inclination to take advantage most of these features... is it going to increase sales of games that much? I fear it could eat into developer resources that should be spent creating a good game. It shouldn't be that hard to develop a good game for a three different platforms as long as each of those platforms don't vary in terms of hardware or software configuration at all (as is currently the case.)

3. Do we really trust Microsoft to do a good job? Microsoft has a poor track record for producing stable and secure products. Though I've been skeptical of the idea of trojans, ect. that spread through gaming consoles up until now, I would not be surprised if in several years we saw a worm reap havoc because too many people didn't run "XFS Update" often enough.

4. Is this legal? Microsoft is a monopoly. DirectX is a part of Windows, which is essentially the subject of their monopoly. Outright admitting that they are attempting to dominate the market with a standard that they own, and using their existing "clout" with DirectX, ect. seems to me to raise a few red flags. What I find ironic is the guy talks about the consumers not having a choice--since when has that ever been a concern of Microsoft's? And I do think I have a coice. For console systems, I can choose a GameCube, or a PlayStation 2, or an X-Box. On any of those systems I can choose from a multitude of games from a multitude of developers. Or I can choose to game on a PC (which I can build myself or buy from any number of OEMs), running Windows or Linux. Or I can choose to game on a Mac. Is this not choice? If a substantial number of these options were replaced by XNS, just how is my choice broadened? I do not understand.

Not really trying to be a Microsoft basher, but I'd be expressing some serious doubts even if it were Nintendo (and I'm something of a fanboy) proposed something like this. The fact that it's Microsoft makes me even more skeptical.

This exists, and it's called Renderware

[Animats]

There already is a product that does now what XNA claims to do someday. It's called Renderware. Renderware claims that about one in four games published today use Renderware.

Renderware is billed as a "universal game engine", more or less. Actually, it's the physics engine from Mathengine, an AI engine from Knyogon, a rendering engine, and an audio engine, which more or less play together. There's also a generic level editor, a build tool, and a configuration management system for all the game assets. All the major target platforms are supported.

In general, none of those components are considered the best in their class. When you look at the titles supported, you don't see any of the top 10 games. But there are time-to-market advantages in buying them all your tools from one vendor. That's the sort of thinking that attracts Microsoft.

So if you want to see what XNA would be like, check out Renderware.

XBox vs PS2: Quality of developer tools ...

[JohnFred]

Sony really, really need to do something about the quality of their tools. I've spent the last two years on a game that runs on the XBox and PS2. The XBox tools are just amazing -for example you can click on a pixel and see a dissasembly of the shader that produced it.

The Sony tools are hideous. Well, the debugger has a nice graphical frontend provided by a third party and is fairly slick and fast compared to Visual Studio, but the compiler and libraries provided are terrible - a patched up gcc 2.9.5 which has a prediliction for internal errors when the array indexing operator [] is used creatively , and that doesn't always optimise away empty constructors. And the libraries provided - at least initially were slow, and crufty and not suitable for game use. At least now, two years after the release of the PS2, Sony provides some decent middleware.

They MUST get developer tools right from the off with the PS3 - especially if it has 8 CPU's. I really, really hope they do. I'd hate to see my market swallowed by the Beast. At present it's economical to develop for the PS2 without needing a single Windows liscence. I hope it stays that way :(