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Microsoft Announces XNA Studio
simoniker writes "Microsoft has announced XNA Studio at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Based on Visual Studio 2005 Team System, XNA Studio is an integrated, team-based development environment tailored specifically for video game development, and will likely launch as a PC retail product early in 2006. Gamasutra has an interview with XNA's Chris Satchell with more details on what Microsoft sees as a solution for ever-expanding cost and complexity in game development."
What exactly is new here that Alienbrain doesn't offer? I guess there are those proprietary APIs for XBox Live compatibility and XBox controller polling..
Just open up a Text editor. =)
"God of Rock, thank you for this chance to kick ass. "
Microsoft needs to get out of the game market as no one seems to want them there anyway. I don't know what they are trying to accomplish with this hostile takeover of sorts. This software sounds nice though, but it seems to me that these all-in-one deals cost more than if you went and got all the tools yourself.
Everyone already knows that XNA is just a fancy name for DirectX10 with even more proprietary lock down than ever. Look, MS...we know you want to own the entire game industry, but it's just not gonna happen. This makes me sad too because the Xbox2 looks like it could be pretty cool (hardware wise), but these kind of tactics are going to turn off everyone but the huge EA's of the world. You want to really "help" the gaming industry? Start working on Open GL instead of Direct3D. Start working on open standards... Start working on something that benefits the entire industry instead of just you.
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
A made a lot of games with just a text editor and CVS. Even for next generation games, there is more of a strain on the artists's packages, like Maya or MAX, then on the development IDE.
This is most likely just some thing to sell to managers, who have no idea how game development works.
And that is the core of the problem: If you want next generation games to success, hire GOOD managers and produces. And good designers. And keep everyone else the F out of the decision making process. It is not enough to promote a F'ing tester to producer and give him a schedule.
F.
... developers, developers, developers, developers!
VS .NET 2005 has implemented all sorts of bells and whistles for "collaborative" development which hasn't been getting much traction in the beta tests and this is just a respin of that to try to make it "sex-ay".
.NET can run on any platform just like COM could."
C'mon, when the marketspeak says:
"In answering this question, Satchell makes it clear that, while XNA Studio runs on Windows for development purposes, there's no reason why any exported data shouldn't be used anywhere, much as Visual Studio data can be compiled for many purposes. However, Microsoft has built or is building more tools closer to the run-time end of the business to give XNA Studio users significant ease in building content for Microsoft platforms, because exported XNA Studio data can be specifically designed to work with these tools."
That's standard Microspeak for "Yeah,
While this isn't a bad thing, the reality is that it would be FASTER to develop on a platform where the API's were open and the tools put out open and WELL DOCUMENTED file formats that anyone could make tools in the tool chain for.
- Visual Studio
.Net Professional 2003 - $528.66
- Office 2003 Standard UPGRADE - $228.59
- Windows XP Professional w/ SP2 - $308.77
- Switching to Linux/OpenOffice/Something from SourceForge - priceless
All prices from CDWGhttp://www.microsoft.com/xna/
has a bunch of multimedia, too.
I'd like to see more games based on innovative concepts or gameplay rather than just having better graphics so the sword you are wielding in SoulCalibur 9 has glints of light that look more realistic. I think it is strange that the Myst concept hasn't resulted in more games like that. Personally, the attraction of Myst for me was less the puzzle solving than the attractive visual design, the music, and the story telling.
My point here is that I don't care that MS has started pushing their game writing system. As long as the console business is based on the blockbuster concept borrowed from Hollywood we're going to continue to get more of the same.
"Lack of technical competence coupled with the arrogance of power, as usual, leads to no good end."
However, we are still anxiously awaiting a deathmatch-based development environment. Teams are great and all, but one "TKer" can spoil the entire experience. As a programmer, I prefer to work alone. Some idiot will always mess up the plan, be it with bad warthog driving or malformed code.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
It amazes me that so many of you have no fucking clue what XNA even is, but that you feel qualified to comment.
I see a lot of comments about MS being unwanted in the games industry. All I can ask is: by who?
They hands down have the best SDK found anywhere in game development. I'll be honest: I work for a large game middleware company, widely considered the best of breed, and the DX/Xbox/Xbox2 SDK still beats us hands down in quality of documentation, examples and (honestly) bugs/stability.
Does Sony produce anything remotely similar? No. Sony painfully shows its hardware roots with their quality of SDKs. Microsoft is a software company first and foremost and it shows in the quality of their kits.
And not to set some kind of flame bait, but Sony continually insists building on their tools on Linux then *porting* to Win32 platforms. Right, because there are lots of Linux-based game development teams out there.
I just want one game.. this one: Microsoft Crash Demo
When modding "Informative", please make sure it both has a source and IS actually informative.