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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."
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.
- 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 CDWGI'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."
AlienBrain is shit, slow, and not cost effective. It's a closed system. Its support for binary art resources is poor. It's buggy. Its Visual Studio integration is flimsy. Its licensing is unreasonable.
We switched back to crappy old Visual SourceSafe, and wrote our own resource management tool which took a few months of programmer hours, and eliminated the cost and annoyance of AlienBrain. Sounds like XNA might enable one to further integrate one's own tools to meet one's unique requirements.