Microsoft To Enable User-Created Xbox 360 Games

simoniker writes "Talking on the eve of its Gamefest event in Seattle, Microsoft has revealed XNA Game Studio Express, a new product which will allow indie developers and students to develop simultaneously on Xbox 360 and PC, and share their games to others in a new Xbox 360 'Creators Club'. XNA Game Studio Express will be available for free to anyone with a Windows XP-based PC, and will provide them with what's described as "Microsoft's next-generation platform for game development." In addition, by joining a "creators club" for an annual subscription fee of $99, users will be able to build, test and share their games on Xbox 360, as well as access a wealth of materials to help speed the game development progress."

Comments

Great!

[Spunkemeyer]

Now I can finally work on that "ringworld" game I've been kicking around in my head...

Re:Great!

[montyzooooma]

We should collaborate - I have an idea for a baking game featuring a Master Chef...

Re:Great!

[aplusjimages]

I like where this is going. Can we add some vehicles and a group of bad guys that have formed a group, a religious group, like a Covenant if you will? I've got some screen renders of the bad guys, just check them out at my site.

Re:Great!

[lord_mike]

We should collaborate - I have an idea for a baking game featuring a Master Chef...

Burgertime 3-D??? That woudl be cool!!! 3-D mutant pickles!!! :-D

Thanks,

Mike

Re:Great!

[imboboage0]

Did it go anything like this?

Sorry. Had to post this.

Re:Great!

[stunt_penguin]

I hear Cortana does a mean chocolate brownie, however Master Chief keeps eating most of the mixture before she's finished. he never listens to her :|

captcha: 'maleness'.... how fitting.

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a Convent?

Re:Great!

[aichpvee]

Oooh, oooooh, oooooooohh!!!! How about some crappy level designs, poor ai, and weapons that look and act "meh"?

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this is great as well very afordable development for the aspiring game Devlopers. This is not the first time something like this was done for consoles though there was the Yaroze a Black PSone(realeased by Sony) that could be linked to the PC to develope games that would run out of system ram had a community as well and there were a couple of gems that came out of that, though the only one I can recall off hand is Devil Dice. I also believed they had a similar vision for a special Linux PS2. Microsoft is taking this a step further in this by removing that hardware development kit element. I personally love the independent games that have came out in the marketplace and hopes this lets some peoples visions get seen.

Re:Great!

[Drooling Iguana]

Revenge of the PAtriarch was pretty cool. Never got a chance to play the sequel, though.

Re:Great!

[CronoCloud]

special Linux PS2's ?

Any PS2 with an HD bay can use the Linux kit.

My game will be called...

[MichaelSmith]

.... "Linux kernel"

Re:My game will be called...

[LiquidCoooled]

Game registration error

Microsoft has detected an error in the naming of your game.
The term 'Linux' is a trademarked entity and as such cannot be used as the title of your game.

Sincerely

Billy boy

ps, even if it weren't trademarked, we still wouldn't let you have it you commie pig :P

Re:My game will be called...

[ameline]

They're probably going to make your game run under .net as managed code. Good luck doing anything worthwhile from a low level or systems point of view under that framework.

Re:My game will be called...

[jkrise]

and mine will be titled: CHAIR-MAN's Flying CHAIRS ... fasten your CHAIR-Belts, 'coz this is gonna' CRASH!! It'll be like Tetris, only instead of bricks, there'll be chairs of different shapes and sizes.

Re:My game will be called...

[MichaelSmith]

They're probably going to make your game run under .net as managed code.

This is where the idea of DRM will either work or fail. If I put my executable in as an array of bytes, will the runtime environment allow an i386 emulator to run?

Re:My game will be called...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your array will be flagged as data in memory, and is thus non-executable. It won't work.

Re:My game will be called...

[squiggleslash]

He's talking about an emulator. The array would be data, as far as the DRM scheme is concerned. At least, if the DRM is so restrictive that the array cannot be "executed" even by an emulator, then programming anything under it will become pretty close to impossible. Many programming techniques involve the creation of temporary byte code. Even ordinary PostScript fonts contain byte code.

Re:My game will be called...

[gEvil (beta)]

Someone should make a Donkey Kong clone, only instead of barrels, there are chairs. And well, you can guess who Donkey Kong is...And Mario should be replaced with interchangable sprites, so you can play as whoever's going to be fucking killed that day...

Re:My game will be called...

[quitcherbitchen]

Who cares?

This is designed for the hobbyist/amateur game developer. A managed environment built on top of a decent framework from Microsoft will allow a much broader audience of enthusiasts out there to create games. Instead of fumbling with buggy or complicated code, they will actually get to express their creativity and fresh designs.

Re:My game will be called...

[clydemaxwell]

Oh, I'm sorry, I read that as "Instead of learning how to actually code, people will get to put half-baked designs onto the market!"

Re:My game will be called...

[Anonymous Coward]

What market? This "dev kit" (lol) is meant for kids who want to tinker with their shiny new toy.

Re:My game will be called...

[another_fanboy]

a decent framework from Microsoft

Therein lies the problem...

Re:My game will be called...

[Anonymous Coward]

What market? This "dev kit" (lol) is meant for kids who want to tinker with their shiny new toy.

Oh, so it's much like sourceforge and the Linux-kernel?

Re:My game will be called...

[Blakey Rat]

Wow. That never gets old.

Re:My game will be called...

[z0idberg]

>And Mario should be replaced with

A penguin perhaps?

Re:My game will be called...

[Chris whatever]

the only reasons Microsoft is doing this is either they want free bug/crashe fixes from developper or expansion sets and or they figure they'll get PC enthusiast to buy their console.

Either way it's a winning solution for them.

Re:My game will be called...

[KDR_11k]

It's a library, not a "make your game in three clicks!" program.

Re:My game will be called...

[Pollardito]

does SourceForge charge $99 a year to share your end product?

Re:My game will be called...

[guaigean]

No, they're doing this because they are actually starting to lose control of the Game Development market. Recently a number of studios have begun porting and/or developing for Linux. If Microsoft loses the hold on gaming, there is very little left stopping people from switching to Linux entirely. Gaming is the reason most home systems use Microsoft.

See, by "giving" this kit away to amateur gamers, they are essentially guaranteeing a long line of new games which only run under a closed Microsoft platform. This ensures that people will continue buying their Windows OS in order to run the tools/games. It's actually a very strategic move by MS, and unfortunately it is likely to work.

Re:My game will be called...

[TheoMurpse]

Gaming is the reason most home systems use Microsoft.

Wow, way to drink that Kool Aid! I'm pretty sure the fact that most home systems come with Windows pre-installed is the reason most home systems use Microsoft.

Re:My game will be called...

[Mac Degger]

True, but I think this is more a direct result of Nintendo saying they'll release dev kits for $2000. Only then did MS realise what that could mean.

What's more insidious than that is the fact that they've snagged some game uni's to brainwas^H^H^Hindoctrinat^H^H^H^Hteach their students ONLY xbox360 development.

Re:My game will be called...

[0xdeadbeef]

It is a toy, that lets you write toys, that run on a toy sandbox, that requires you and anyone you want to share with to pay a yearly subscription for the privilege.

Could you imagine if Lego Mindstorms required this sort of nonsense?

Re:My game will be called...

[CaseM]

So don't develop for it.

Re:My game will be called...

[Delphiki]

The PS3, PS2, Wii, GameCube, Xbox, Xbox 360, Radeon X1900, and GeForce 7800 are all pretty much just toys..

Re:My game will be called...

[aichpvee]

There are a lot of people who only run windows because it plays games and would switch to Linux if the option were there. Many of them are "opinion leaders" who can, and usually do, affect the buying decisions of friends and family members. The near monopoly on PC games enjoyed by windows is the reason people stick with it. The pre-installed systems are just a symptom of this.

I'm curious what companies the GP is referring to though. I can't think of any new ones porting games recently except Second Life and I can match that with a NWN2 not getting ported. Not to mention that I haven't heard anything on UT2007 coming to Linux, which would be a major loss since 2004 was on Linux and performed noticeably better than it did on windows.

Re:My game will be called...

[brouski]

We're not launcing the space shuttle, just developing a game.

Re:My game will be called...

[norman619]

Ummm... no..... They are doing this becasue they know games in which users can design levels have a much longer life. Just look at the fan base of games like Unreal Tournament. People play the game long after they have played the hell out of the standard levels. Why? Becasue there are lots of good user designed levels worth playing. And I suspect they had this in mind for Gears Of War which will be hitting stores soon. Then we have Unreal Torunament 2007 wich will most likely have an XBOX 360 port of it. This is actually a good step forward. It will make the XBOX 360 much more attractive since it will give console gamers the same opprtunity/ability that PC gamers have had for the past 15 or so years. To create their own game content and games. This could only help MS. They are making their LIVE service worth the money you pay for it. I was not going to renew my subscription but after this news I will give it another year or two to see how this develops.

Re:My game will be called...

[Drooling Iguana]

Why would Microsoft want their games to have a longer life? They don't make any money when you re-play your old games. They make money when you buy new ones. It's in Microsoft's best interest to make sure you buy new games as often as possible, which means that they should be trying to make their games have as short a life as possible while still being long enough for you to keep buying them.

Microsoft undoubtedly has their reasons for this, but giving games a longer life isn't one of them.

Re:My game will be called...

[Allison Geode]

i.. sort of don't get it. i've been busy playing dead rising on my xbox 360 this weekend. what did i miss?

Re:My game will be called...

[darkhitman]

Stupid Microsoft, trying to pass off it's 'feeding hungry children' as 'philanthropy'... it's clearly an attempt to monopolize the orphan market, buying up their mindshare when it's cheap. I won't stand for it!

Re:My game will be called...

[westlake]

Recently a number of studios have begun porting and/or developing for Linux

Name five, other than iD. Console-only does not count.

Why a subscription fee?

[el cisne]

This sounded pretty cool, and then I hit the 'subscription fee'. Dang, man, what is it with these 'subscription fees' ? Ok, $99, actually $100 with a haircut, is not so terrible an amount, but is the value there? Seems like they would get more mileage out of this thing if they didn't charge an annual fee and just let folks work together.

Re:Why a subscription fee?

[Churla]

Since Microsoft won't be getting a cut of the games in question, and developer goodwill isn't exactly something they've had trouble getting behind the 360, what exactly would they get from just opening up the development platform?

I believe they were charing significantly more for the full scale developers kit/package which companies like EA Sports and such buy into. This makes a "tinkering/homebrew" entry point into that arena for what is only the cost of a couple games.

Re:Why a subscription fee?

[Fallus Shempus]

More games

i.e. more reasons to choose X-Box over Playstation
there's plenty out there that bought P.C.s for gaming and that industry was not built
on those that could pay IBM (e.g.) for development tools.

Re:Why a subscription fee?

[Red Flayer]

THe subscription fee is only for those to want to build, share, test on the 360. It's completely free for XP-based PC development.

Of course I can't vouch for MS's motivation in charging for the 360 access, but I would think it has something to do with not clogging its tubes (by which I mean not overwhelming the XP homebrew offerings with crap that 10,000 clueless pre-teens put together), or something.
Or maybe it's to help recoup their losses on the 360 sales, while XP is profitable already.
Or maybe it's to help ensure that XP & Vista remain the OS of choice for your basic nerd (since we all know advanced nerds use linux).
Or it could be that since MS maintains the 360 online distribution channel, they want to cover part of the costs associated with that -- whereas the PC distribution channel is the internet, and for all intents and purposes, free to MS in this case.

I think, though, it really has to do with not diluting decent offerings in the 360 space.

Re:Why a subscription fee?

[mwvdlee]

It's probably to (partially?) recoup the loss on X360 hardware for developers purchasing an X360 solely with the intent of running homebrew.

Re:Why a subscription fee?

[twistedsymphony]

Or maybe it's to help recoup their losses on the 360 sales, while XP is profitable already.

If I had to pick one reason, that would be my guess... homebrew software on the Xbox 1 was pretty popular, we've been reading all sorts of articles about Bill Gates wanting to "engage" those people. Also the argument against the use of modchips for homebrew is that it breaks Microsoft's profit model where they loose money on the hardware and recoup it on the software and accessories. Obviously people useing free homebrew instead of buying official MS licensed games is only helping MS loose more money.

By charging a subscription fee you can have your cake and eat it too. Garage developers can make AND RUN their homebrew software for a fairly low cost $100 really isn't that much, and the subscription fee lets MS allow that kind of development without breaking their profit model, essentially making up the money they're "loosing" by not selling you games.

while it might be a bit more expensive then chipping your console a lot of people will opt for the legal route if available. Not to mention I can see a whole lot of non-developers signing up just to run the homebrew stuff made by the real developers. I'll tell you what, if they make an XBMC360 and it's availble on this thing, I'll pay the $100 a year to run that and other software, weather I'm developing my own software or not. I would imagine there will be a lot of other people in the same boat. MS basically found a way to allow homebrew software and turn a profit at the same time... crafty buggers.

Re:Why a subscription fee?

[macrom]

Companies tend to have these low-cost barriers to entry simply to keep every random person with a game idea from throwing stuff onto their development site. In addition, if it's free, one is more likely to sign up, piddle around and then never create anything. At least with a small entry fee there is a slight financial incentive for you to actually go through with creating and deploying something. To me, $99 is nothing, but it seems like this is targeted at younger kids in their late teens/early twenties. Depending on your family's financial background, $99 is a lot of money to a student with little to no income stream and will ensure that you at least have a vested interest in their program.

Weight Watchers (the only example I can think of right now) has the same principle. They charge you $10-12 a week for their program whether you attend or not. They don't really do anything but weigh you and give you some rah-rah speeches to keep you motivated. The financial cost is there because, psychologically, people who have a vested financial interest in something tend to follow through with it more often and more completely.

Re:Why a subscription fee?

[Red Flayer]

Nice analysis, and spot on IMO. One little caveat:

while it might be a bit more expensive then chipping your console a lot of people will opt for the legal route if available.

I wouldn't say that chipping your console is cheaper than the $99/yr sub fee, considering that you'll lose a lot of the 360 functionality by chipping it (Live is not an afterthought like it was with the Xbox; it's key to the 360). Assuming, of course, that no one comes up with a way to chip a 360 and have it not locked out.

Re:Why a subscription fee?

[lukas84]

$99 is a lot of money to a student with little to no income stream and will ensure that you at least have a vested interest in their program.

So.. If $99 is a lot of money, what about $399 (current of an xbox 360 on bestbuy.com)? And what about $59 (current cost of a new game, which would be a monthly or bi-monthly recurring cost, depending on how many games you buy)?

I think $99 isn't a real barrier of entry for people who can afford an xbox. They might not pay the money out of a joke, but if they're serious it won't hold them back at all.

Re:Why a subscription fee?

[AcidLacedPenguiN]

At first I cringed over that subscription fee, but then I thought two things that make it significant for either Microsoft or "the people." Basically, I think Microsoft wants to ring people in who pay the fee thinking "I'm going to code myself a game for the X360!" and 6 months later they either have completely forgotten about it, or have just given up on making it. In this case MS makes money off of chumps.
The other is that, say you and 3 friends decide to do a little development (call it a dev team if you will), and only buy one subscription, thus $25 each. Have one person doing testing and the rest development in the free pc environment.

Honestly, I don't think Microsoft would have a problem with that second case, I mean, their games department seems slightly less evil than their windows department.

Re:Why a subscription fee?

[Tweekster]

What would they get?

More people buying the 360+subscription to live.

It is called a value added service. Makes the product that much more attractive.

Re:Why a subscription fee?

[Anonymous Coward]

At least with a small entry fee there is a slight financial incentive for you to actually go through with creating and deploying something.

Now that's some doublethinking.

Re:Why a subscription fee?

[Simon Donkers]

I'm an indie developer and I'd love to loose that subscription fee as well. While I being a student don't mind paying $100/year for this I do mind that anyone that wants to play games I make has to pay $100/year. That means my target audience is virtually non existent. Without any system to get your games out to for instance Xbox live arcade I'm not switching development tools.
True, releasing lots of terrible and a few good games to Xbox live arcade for free will mean sales will crash on the arcade and Microsoft will loose a lot of money but they will gain a lot of happy customers. I don't mind either selling games on Xbox live arcade with a part going to Microsoft. However Microsoft is trying to keep Xbox live arcade rather empty to not overwhelm the users with choice and even big companies have difficulty getting on arcade.

The idea is very nice but without a system for developers to distribute there games I don't see this as becoming very successful. True, I can get noticed by developers and MS can choose to sell the game on arcade with my consent with a share for me but both are very unlikely. I currently develop indie games for the PC and after my last big game I got 4 job offers and lots of happy users.
While I will keep a close eye on this service I won't move development tools just yet and I don't expect most other people to do so either.

Re:Why a subscription fee?

[HTH NE1]

More people buying the 360+subscription to live.

Since when did a 360+subscription become one of the essentials of life along with air, food, and water?

It is called a value added service. Makes the product that much more attractive.

Sounds like an addictive substance to me if you become biologically dependent upon it. That's a bit too attractive.

Re:Why a subscription fee?

[JohnyDog]

And as everyone knows, that is good theory, but falls completely short when it comes to teenagers. We are talking about kids which already spent (or better said they parents spent) lots of money for their xbox, and _much_ more for the tons of games. When they'll be faced with offer like this, they probably say something along 'hey, he's spending all day playing games, and now for the price of one, he could do something really productive, or at least get somewhat creative ? why not!' - i definitely remember my parents were like this when i've got my atari 800.

Oh, and plus the fact that i've never seen so much 14yo whelps in my life as i've seen in one week trying out one of the most expensive MMROPGs.

Re:Why a subscription fee?

[KDR_11k]

Yes but those aren't sold at a profit. Consoles are never the primary source of income for their manufacturer, the money comes mostly from game license fees.

Re:Why a subscription fee?

[Tweekster]

I thought I described value added service. Ie something that doesnt make you much money in itself, but entices people to buy your product (so you can sell them games and other subscriptions, where you do make the money)...

Since the XBox isnt the only game console in town, they have to make it that much more desireable in order to compete, so that they even have the chance to sell those games that were licensed.

Value added means you add something extra that wont make you moeny so that you can move product (and in this case one step more, to sell licenses for the games)

Re:Why a subscription fee?

[tepples]

More people buying the 360+subscription to live.

Since when did a 360+subscription become one of the essentials of life along with air, food, and water?

This live.

Re:Why a subscription fee?

[duerra]

Well, at least you're consistent. It's *lose*, not *loose*. LOOSE is that hooker down the street. *Lose* is what happens to your money when you go visit her.

Not trying to be an ass or anything - but the only way to help is to bring it to your attention :)

Re:Why a subscription fee?

[HTH NE1]

More people buying the 360+subscription to live.

Since when did a 360+subscription become one of the essentials of life along with air, food, and water?

This live.

And whoosh goes the joke.

Re:Why a subscription fee?

[aichpvee]

So microsoft is using user-created xbox 360 games to sell windows and office?

Re:Why a subscription fee?

[Anonymous Coward]

I read somewhere else that the PC XNA Dev Kit is free. What you're paying for is Microsoft approving your binaries for distribution.

This is in the same vein as their Express versions of their development suite. Your subscription fee covers the labor for approving the binary, the Kit is freely available. This seems like it might really lower the barrier of entry for Indie games that were developed collaboratively using Google Code (Oh, the Irony). In theory you don't have to pony up the cash until you have something ready to share with the 360 community.

This might prompt me to go out and buy a 360, then again I dont have a Windows PC to use for development. All my PCs are Linux based.

Re:Why a subscription fee?

[Anonymous Coward]

are you serious?

Re:Why a subscription fee?

[PaganRitual]

And whoosh goes the joke. It's just trying to catch up with the humor, which bailed on your post ages ago.

Re:Why a subscription fee?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you a complete moron?

Re:Why a subscription fee?

[apoc06]

the site actually says that there will be no Mac version of XNA, so in a way this pushes Mac xbox360 wouldbe programmers to thier OS. so in an inadvertent way, they are.

Killer Feature

[hyfe]

This could be a killer feature.

There's so many extremely simple games that are insanely fun multiplayer, and will probably never, ever be released as stand-alone games.

I'm still praying the Nintendo Wii will be opened up like this, but if it isn't, this might be what tips me over to XBOX 360. Programming for the Wii-controllers would be fun though, and I really, really want to play Pong with them :).

Re:Killer Feature

[Anonymous Coward]

Pong? Since it's a 2D game, you'd get the same effect with a mouse.

Re:Killer Feature

[miro f]

Considering Sony always tries its hardest to kill the homebrew segment, I more and more cannot see why anyone would buy a PlayStation 3.

to be honest, I never really understood why the PSP homebrew scene is so much bigger than the DS

Re:Killer Feature

[CastrTroy]

Well, the good news, is that the Nintendo Wii Dev Kit will cost somewhere around $1700. That's not too bad a price, considering the PS3 kit is rumoured to cost between $30,000 and $50,000. I'm not sure how much the full dev kit on the XBox 360 goes for. I think this could open up a lot of possiblities for the Wii. You get the full dev kit for under $2000. Not some rinky dink homebrew version, the whole thing. At this price, there could be WiiNux before we know it. And it would probably sell if it offered good multimedia functionality to the Wii, such as playing downloaded movies, and Linux games. Although I don't think Nintendo would let that fly, as people would just install an emulator, and play the Old NES games for free instead of paying for them.

Re:Killer Feature

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably because the motivation on the part of a lot of the hackers is to do something that is more difficult and/or something the company does not want you to do. It's honestly probably more about doing something that makes you "feel cool" and "fucking sony" more than it is about making games or opening up functionality in the hardware.

Re:Killer Feature

[HAKdragon]

to be honest, I never really understood why the PSP homebrew scene is so much bigger than the DS

It's probably because you can run (signed) code right off the memory stick on a PSP and since game saves are stored on a memory stick, almost every user has one. With the DS you normally have to buy extra equipment.

Re:Killer Feature

[DrXym]

I'm hoping that the PS3 (as has been suggested) ships with a decent and usable version of Linux. That opens the possibility of using the PS3 for almost any functionality, not just games. Of course Sony have screwed things up in the past, so I don't hold a great deal of confidence in what they might offer. Still, the Microsoft thing looks like some cheezy game development kit which only produces games that you can share with other developers. Doesn't sound very compelling to me.

Re:Killer Feature

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but can you jump around the room, waving the mouse back and forth with the grace and style of a spasming retard?

No, and that's where your comparison falls short.

Re:Killer Feature

[apoc06]

It's interesting that you considered this to be a fault of the playstation line.

The Playstation line has always had it's own "developer's club" in the form of the netyaroze and linux kits that they provided for the PS1/PS2. It wasn't perfect, but it was there and one of the first for a /major console/ of its kind. The PSP is the only Playstation console that has not had some form of officially sanctioned homebrew enabling feature. Perhaps it's because they lose more on the hardware that they decided not to release any homebrew development package, that's just my speculation. the PSP homebrew scene is larger because even though many dont wish to admit it, but there is a higher significant portion of the DS community that is younger, or simply don't care or know what homebrew is, and don't know where to find the required additional equipment. Homebrew on the PSP is relatively much easier, since all that's required is firmware under 2.71 [basically any PSP created before ~June] and maybe a copy of the widely available GTA:LCS.

Given the release of rumors regarding potential homebrew "support" on the ps3 out of the box http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?st ory=9290 and plans to build their version of XBLA based on user submitted content, this press release by Microsoft seems to be in response to that.

Some features of the xbox360 seems to be in response to Sony's announced features: HDDVD add-on, tacked-on backwards compatibility, motion sensitive camera, homebrew efforts, etc... Just as many features of the PS3 seem to be tacked on in response to MS and Nintendo: motion sensitive controllers, first party wireless controllers, hard drive included, free internet community, real anti-aliasing. Even the Wii has a few features that were borrowed: DVD playback, backwards compatibility, sleeker formfactor, free internet community, downloadable games. All this is to say that this is a prime case of where competition is totally benefitting consumers. The more each company "borrows" from the competition's features, the more each company will have to innovate and release intriguing software if they wish to stay relevent and not lose marketshare. It seems like this is the generation where we as the consumers finally benefit from the three way competition.

Re:Killer Feature

[Anonymous Coward]

It might be cheap compared to the PS3 and 360, but will they sell it to you? I think not.

Console companies are very strict about who they give their software kits to, just call up Nintendo and ask.

Re:Killer Feature

[squiggleslash]

Sony's actions WRT the PSP notwithstanding, I don't think they've ever been heavily anti-homebrew. They have dabbled a little with the system, selling an official consumer user-accessable GNU/Linux kit for the PS2, and announcing user-accessable GNU/Linux as a standard feature of the PS3.

I think the major problem with the PSP is that they don't know what to do with it, and that, more than anything else, is causing problems with them creating an officially supported home-brew environment. It's not really suitable for a crude port of GNU/Linux, and both game developers and studios are concerned enough about piracy that they can't just open up the APIs.

to be honest, I never really understood why the PSP homebrew scene is so much bigger than the DS

Audience. Plain and simple. The general gist I got from Slashdot was that people saw the PSP as a powerful console and the DS as something gimmicky. I thought they were wrong then and still think so (the DS has a flexible input device to get around the limitations of the joystick model, the PSP plays movies - how is the former more gimmicky?) but, nonetheless, whether I agree with them or not, that was the view, and more technical people seemed to favour the PSP over the DS.

Add to that the initial lack of content for the PSP, and the percieved lack of quality, fun, content for the PSP today, and add to that (finished adding yet?) the built-in memory stick reader vs the DS's proprietary cartridges, allowing homebrew once you could find an exploit without additional hardware (ok, the DS has wireless, but it's taking a while for people to get the hang of it), and essentially all the pieces were in play right from the start.

(And you shouldn't discount the DS scene. It's alive, it's just not as well known.)

Re:Killer Feature

[Anonymous Coward]

The X-Box 360, IIRC, the dev kit costs about $10000 per unit including the dev console and the software, however (again, IIRC) you can't just go buy a single one from MS, they have a minimum number of units that you must purchase and every game has to be certified by MS in order to be released. I had the opportunity to ask one of the 360 OS developers about why this was the case and they told me that the X-Box 360 was being marketed specifically to game publishers and that they wanted to keep everyone else out.

Re:Killer Feature

[stsp]

I don't think we'll need an official toolchain for the wii. There is an actively maintained multi-platform open source homebrew toolchain for GameBoy Advance, GP32, Playstation Portable, GameCube and Nintendo DS here. Adding support for the wii will just be a matter of time. Actually the guys already opened up an IRC channel for the wii, even though there's probably not much coding going on yet :)

Re:Killer Feature

[Blakey Rat]

1) Nintendo's not just going to give a dev kit to every random Joe who asks for one. You're either going to have to be an established game company, or have an agreement with a decently big publisher before you're added to the list.

2) Even if Nintendo does give you a dev kit, that doesn't mean you'll be able to release games for their system. All consoles have a logo program, and games that aren't vetted and approved can't be run. That's not to say it'll be trivial for you to get Microsoft to approve your game, but at least Microsoft is out there assuring people that it'll happen.

3) $1700 vs. $99/year. If you're paying $1700 for something, you're basically already a full-time game developer. $99/year is cheap enough so that Microsoft is going to have tons and tons of people on their kit, and they'll be able to pick and choose the best from the lot. Plus, you can start development of your game for free... the $99 is just for access to more documentation and Xbox portability. You can develop and release you PC version for free, THEN decide to pay $99 to port to Xbox and try to get it on Live.

4) Isn't it telling that every time Microsoft announces something truly innovative and, frankly, pretty damn refreshing, there has to be a counter-post saying that Nintendo has the same thing... even if they don't? I love Slashdot. Give credit where credit is due... this is a great move on Microsoft's part, and a win-win for every gamer out there.

Re:Killer Feature

[grumbel]

Well, the good news, is that the Nintendo Wii Dev Kit will cost somewhere around $1700.

The bad news however is that at this point you simply can't buy it, no matter how much it would cost. Nintendo only gives away devkits to larger publishers, not indies and if that will ever change, we will see. Beside that $1700 is still quite a bit of money and even if you colud get your hands at a devkit, you still don't have a way to actually publish your game, which really is the important part in the end. XBox360 development at $99 a year, doesn't sound perfect, but already extremly attractive and if Nintendo can compete with that, I kind of doubt given Nintendos history.

Re:Killer Feature

[stsp]

This could be a killer feature.

Indeed.

I'm still praying the Nintendo Wii will be opened up like this

I'm wondering to what degree they will "open up" though. After all this is Microsoft *and* the console market we are talking about. You will probably not see much of the underlying hardware :(

Another poster suggested to port the Linux kernel, which was modded +5 Funny, but being a developer on the port of Linux to the Nintendo DS I'd consider this point more seriously. To port another OS to the X360 you will probably still have to rely on software hacks or even hardware mods to get things running, even if you have Microsoft's devkit.

I'm probably stating the obvious when I say that I'd like consoles to be opened up to a point where you can port a bare kernel easily because you have documentation for the hardware. And not because some crazy hacker figured out how to make code run on an otherwise proprietary platform that is shielded of as much as possible from running custom code. I don't even want to think about all the DRM methods vendors might employ in their next generation consoles.

Alas, I agree that what microsoft is doing here is definitely a good thing in many respects. At least it gets some people do some coding before they wreck their brains with endless hours of game play. I hope Nintendo follows their example, maybe even to a greater extent.

Re:Killer Feature

[Anonymous Coward]

"PS3 kit is rumoured to cost between $30,000 and $50,000" Halve that and you're in the right range.

Re:Killer Feature

[Aladrin]

All very true... But once Nintendo sees the success of the XBox homebrew program, don't you think they'll feel quite a bit of pressure to do something similar? At $1700, they ARE going to have every Joe Indie Developer knocking at their door for a devkit. And they will almost assuredly fail to research some of them... Allowing some non-devs to have them, and some devs not to have them. There will be mass panic at Nintendo's licensing department.

Embracing the community here is very very much to the advantage of Nintendo. And they can't fail to have seen the QJ.net blogs where there are TONS of homebrew releases each week. Getting paid to allow that instead of people hacking your system and exposing vulnerabilities... That's gotta be a good thing.

Re:Killer Feature

[Anonymous Coward]

A simple, yet great game, that would be even more fun multiplayer would be a redone Spy Vs. Spy!
Think of all the potential this game has!
Some new traps and such, maybe put it into 1st person (perhaps not, though I could see 1st person as a great challenge as people can stab you in the back!), the list could go on forever.

Re:Killer Feature

[joystickgenie]

The more I look into this the less of a killer feature I see it as.

From the XNA FAQ:

XNA Game Studio Express is a new offering, targeted at students and hobbyists for game development. XNA Game Studio is based on Visual C# Express 2005

Although C# is good for application development, in many cases it is not optimized and fast enough for serious game development. But I guess if this is targeted at hobbyists that this might not be too much of the problem

There is currently no supported way to share binaries on the Xbox 360. Currently, there are four requirements that must be met in order to share a game targeting Xbox 360 which is developed with XNA Game Studio Express.

1. The individual you are planning to share the game with must be logged in to Xbox Live and have an active subscription to the XNA Creators Club

2. The receiving user must have downloaded the XNA Framework runtime environment for the Xbox 360

3. The receiving user must have XNA Game Studio Express installed on their own development PC

4. The game project, including all source and content assets, must be shared with the receiving user. The receiving user then compiles and deploys the game to their Xbox 360.

1 You have to stumble across the game yourself through some other medium (like finding the developers webpage) you have to request the game from the person who made it, then you both have to be on at the same time to transfer it.

2&3 so the only people who can play the games are other developers. There is no available means for regular gamers or casual gamers to play games developed by this.

4 there are no means of installation for the games. All games must be recompiled by the recipient before they can play them.

The XNA Framework runtime environment for Xbox 360 requires that a physical hard drive be present on your Xbox 360 retail console.

This one is a little bit more minor. But it does mean that anyone who bought the Core System is out of luck with this.

Re:Killer Feature

[AaronBrethorst]

I think the managed (C#) code == slow meme isn't necessarily that important in this case. Take a look at a number of the games you see today on XBLA like Hexic HD. If I'm not mistaken, it mentions in the game's credits that it uses Flash to drive the game (also discussed here: http://www.thezbuffer.com/articles/376.aspx). I'd be shocked to learn that Actionscript-based apps running on top of a Flash runtime are any faster than a CLR-based app on the 360. For some games out there (Halo, Gears of War, Mass Effect, etc.), essentially your Triple-A titles, I doubt you'll see them written in managed code any time soon. But for casual games it shouldn't really matter.

Re:Killer Feature

[vmfedor]

There's so many extremely simple games that are insanely fun multiplayer, and will probably never, ever be released as stand-alone games.

Yeah, that's what I originally thought, too, but according to this you won't be able to access the networking features through the SDK, at least yet.

On the surface this looks like a great idea.. releasing the SDK so you can make your favorite single-player game on the XBox is great. But this seems overly restrictive... the dev tools are free, sure, but you can't do anything on an XBox 360 with them unless you pay $100.00 (which truthfully isn't that bad). The catch is that nobody *else* can do anything with your game unless they are also a subscriber. You can't distribute your game to anybody else any other way than through the developer subscriber network.

This is an interesting thing for Microsoft to do but by keeping it developer-only they're not making it compelling enough. First you have to pay a hundred bucks, second you don't have access to everything that makes XBox awesome, third barely anyone will be able to play it.

It's a good strategy to try and win people over to the XBox before the Wii comes along but I don't think they've gone quite far enough. But it's a step in the right direction!

Re:Killer Feature

[Cadallin]

I think a significant part of this is the already announced plan to allow all new games to be released via the "Virtual Console" system, in a fashion similar to the xbox live marketplace.

Althought, to be honest, I'm going to be very suprised if the Revolution doesn't get hacked, and I'm excited about the possibility. A 700MHz G3, around 80 or so meg of ram, a decent sound chip, and graphics along the lines of RADEON 9800 for as cheap as the revolution sounds like a pretty spiffy system to me. I'd expect XBMC capabilities to added pretty easily.

Re:Killer Feature

[rohlfinator]

Isn't it telling that every time Microsoft announces something truly innovative and, frankly, pretty damn refreshing, there has to be a counter-post saying that Nintendo has the same thing... even if they don't?

Actually, Nintendo did have a game development tool in the works for the 64DD before it got cancelled, as part of the Mario Artist series. Sony also had the Net Yaroze for PS1 and the PS2 Linux dev kit available for homebrew, although they were a bit more expensive than this. There are probably other examples, but these types of things have always been pretty niche.

Microsoft will almost certainly be the first developer to pull it off effectively, of course, and I agree that it'll be an awesome feature for gamers to have access to. But it's not a particularly novel idea; I'm kind of surprised they didn't try it with the original Xbox.

Fragmenting the community.

[Anonymous Coward]

If this is anything like the UT2004 'Make Something Unreal' its quite possible that this is going to fragment the playing community into small non-viable sub-communities.

E.g. Alien Swarm has about 4 decent servers, and a community of 100 players.

Re:Fragmenting the community.

[Anonymous Coward]

If this is anything like the UT2004 'Make Something Unreal' its quite possible that this is going to fragment the playing community into small non-viable sub-communities.

E.g. Alien Swarm has about 4 decent servers, and a community of 100 players.

But the winner, Red Orchestra, is doing rather well.

But I don't understand: it's nothing like Make Something Unreal, is it? It's a development environment not a mod-creator for any existing game.

Re:Fragmenting the community.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except unlike Unreal's tools, these seem like they're actually useful.

(If you say UnrealED 2.0 is easy to use, you're lying to yourself. Kinda like drinking crushed glass and telling yourself it's a nice blushing wine. It may be decent for making shooter clones, but to do anything more complicated....)

Re:Fragmenting the community.

[Anonymous Coward]

The first dude is clearly confused when he ponders if it will be like Create Something Unreal. This is a complete Software Development Kit for the 360 for people to create an entirely new game. It compares to Create Something Unreal like putting stickers on your car compares to building a car from the ground up.

But the guy who said, "It may be decent for making shooter clones, but to do anything more complicated....", I've gotta ask, just what were you wanting to do with Unreal Ed?

Unreal Ed has but one purpose, creating a 3D world for use in the Unreal Engine. In that regard it's the best there is, as it is all there is. I'll give you it's not easy, it's pretty fraggin' far from easy to be sure. Probably because it's designed to be used by a large team of specialized individuals who each only use a small subset of its tools.

The basics however aren't all that hard to learn, as my Big Box O' Death map is proof of.

Re:Fragmenting the community.

[MSFanBoi2]

This sounds kinda just like the Linux community...

Well color me impressed...

[Stachybotris]

But this seems like a good idea in many ways. I'm a bit taken aback that MicroSoft is doing something to let hobbists flex their creative muscle, especially in such a (relatively) open way. I mean, development for X-Box and PC? That's a pretty sweet deal.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure a lot of the games will probably suck eggs, but it might just turn out that we'd see some real innovation in design and concept with an infusion of fresh development blood. Because you never know, one of those hobbists/indie designers might crank out something good enough to either a) get picked up by an existing studio or b) generate enough interest from others to start up their own studio. Then it just becomes a matter of being a good enough businessman to keep things working.

Re:Well color me impressed...

[zanglang]

It does, really. More interestingly this came after Bill Gates being reportedly intrigued by Xbox Mod Community after an employee brought his own modded Xbox to show The Man, just a few weeks ago.

From the link:

A little over a year ago, one of the people in my group modded an Xbox, installed Avalaunch, and put all sorts of Xbox mod scene apps on the box, like XBMC, RSS readers, etc, along with some "backup" games. :rolleyes: He brought this box along to a meeting with Bill Gates. Bill saw a demo of this, was quite impressed, and asked something along the lines of "How can we engage this community?" - instead of saying something like "How can we squash this?" It's long been on the back of everyone's minds in the Xbox group - how can we get students and hobbyists involved without disrupting the console business model? The good news is that it's still on the radar, we'll see what happens in the future.

"How can we engage this community?" This is their answer, maybe? Let's just hope MS is doing the right thing this time.

Re:Well color me impressed...

[IamTheRealMike]

I think this is fantastic news, if only because it offers a cool and enticing way into programming for the younger generation (shit that makes me sound old ...)

If you interview a random sample of programmers in the world today I bet a lot of the 25-30 aged ones will have got started by writing cheesy games as kids for their {Commodore 64/Sinclair Spectrum/BBC Micro}, even if they then went into corporate software, operating systems, embedded work or whatever. Learning to write software by doing databases in Visual Basic is boring. Learning to write software by doing cool games you can add multiplayer to and beat your friends at is a much better proposition.

Wasn't the head of Nintendo saying that it's a shame games are no longer feasable for hobbyists and entry level studios? It's surprising Microsoft beat them to it, but then Visual Studio Express was designed for the home/hobbyist developer as well if I remember correctly so maybe not too surprising. Here's hoping it becomes a trend and the next generation of coders are learning threading by actually doing it, instead of memorizing lecture slides.

Re:Well color me impressed...

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the main reasons they are doing this is to combat piracy believe it or not. By taking the hobbyist developers out of the loop and giving them legitimate means to develop for the 360, they will be less inclined to try and circumvent the security measures to run unsigned code.
Personally, I don't care why they are doing it, I am still stoked by the fact that they are doing it. This is the most convincing reason for me to get an XBox 360 yet.

Re:Well color me impressed...

[CastrTroy]

I got my first crack at programming by editing gorilla.bas and nibbles.bas. This was great fun, giving yourself 30 lives in nibbles, or giving yourself only 1 in order to make it harder. You could also make the explosions really big in gorillas. After that I picked up some programming books from the library, which had code listings you could type in. I distinctly remember oregon trail. I'm not sure if I ever got it working correctly, but it was great fun trying to get it work. I also learned a lot about the memory system of DOS, as well as how to configure it so that you could run games that required very close to how much memory you actually had. You're right. I don't think I would have ever been as into computers as I was had it not been for games. I would have never spent hours tweaking my config.sys and autoexec.bat just to do a spreadsheet.

Re:Well color me impressed...

[Anonymous Coward]

"I mean, development for X-Box and PC? That's a pretty sweet deal."

Well, there are plenty of great, free tools for development on PC already. And if you want to generate interest or get picked up you can do that easily enough with a pure PC freeware game. Check out "Every Extend" a free PC game that Q Studio liked so much they're doing a PSP version called "Every Extend Extra".

It's quite cool that you can now program on such a powerful console though - assuming they let you use all the power. Before this, the dreamcast was probably the best console you could easily do homebrew on, or the xbox 1 but that's basically a PC anyway.

Re:Well color me impressed...

[esarjeant]

This is also a good thing for game publishers and ultimately Microsoft in general. If you can write a game for both XBOX360 and the Windows PC platform at the same time, think of the cost savings. It will basically make one of these platforms free, and if Microsoft can get a good CLR to Macintosh (we will be able to play these games on any of the major desktop platforms.

Hopefully, the continued work on Mono will eventually make XLR part of our Linux environments as well. This is a fabulous idea, and in the long run will benefit Microsoft and PC users alike.

I think the argument that games require "low-level" (ie: ASM) development in order to operate effectively is irrelavent. Processing power has far exceeded what was available even a few years ago, with a high-speed multi-core chip the average user has more processing power then they can ever use. Since most gameplay is submersive (ie: you can't do anything else while you're playing) it is a perfect fit for our modern personal computer.

Re:Well color me impressed...

[AlexMax2742]

I can't remember where I read or saw this, and it might been a myth, but I remember reading somewhere where Bill Gates and his crew were given a demonstration of a chipped Xbox, complete with the crazy looks, loaders, homebrew and I think even pirated games. After the demonstration, instead of saying "How can we put a stop to this?", Bill was impressed and supposedly said "What can we do to embrace this community?".

Of course, I can't remember where I saw this story, and it might be just that - a story - but seriously, if you think that Microsoft didn't know that the homebrow and modding community existed, and saw it as a potential market, you're crazy. Sure, it's 100 bucks a year, but getting your box chipped or bypassed is inhearantly risky and could brick your $400 investment, ban your $400 investment from Live, not to mention the fact that the nicer chips cost a pretty penny and take quite a bit of work to install.

Re:Well color me impressed...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't the head of Nintendo saying that it's a shame games are no longer feasable for hobbyists and entry level studios? It's surprising Microsoft beat them to it, but then Visual Studio Express was designed for the home/hobbyist developer as well if I remember correctly so maybe not too surprising.

I'm not so convinced that either company beat the other to it as much as what both companies are doing naturally extends towards independant and hobbiest developers. The Virtual Console and XBox Live Arcade are both designed to provide simpler (less expensive) games to the gaming public; to a certain extent I would say XBox Live Arcade was designed more with the thought of indie developers creating games, and the Virtual Console was about larger developers cashing in on existing properties, but I those were just the initial concerns. Ultimately, in both cases, a strong development team could produce a good game with 8 people in 6 months; contrast this with the average Next Generation game where it will take 40-80 people 24-36 months to create a game (although I admit these are just the projects I know about).

What surprises me with this isn't so much that Microsoft beat Nintendo to it (being that the XBox 360 was launched a year before Nintendo), but that Microsoft didn't have this in place in January of 2005 (thus having a wide selection of XBox live arcade games ready for the system's launch.

Re:Well color me impressed...

[I'm Don Giovanni]

Allow me to add some meat to your post:
http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2006/6/ 22/4415

...allow me [Matt Lee, a Microsoft Xbox dev] to share a related story. A little over a year ago, one of the people in my group modded an Xbox, installed Avalaunch, and put all sorts of Xbox mod scene apps on the box, like XBMC, RSS readers, etc, along with some "backup" games.:rolleyes: He brought this box along to a meeting with Bill Gates. Bill saw a demo of this, was quite impressed, and asked something along the lines of "How can we engage this community?" - instead of saying something like "How can we squash this?" It's long been on the back of everyone's minds in the Xbox group - how can we get students and hobbyists involved without disrupting the console business model? The good news is that it's still on the radar, we'll see what happens in the future.

Looks like Microsoft is indeed persuing this.

Re:Well color me impressed...

[TheoMurpse]

If you interview a random sample of programmers in the world today I bet a lot of the 25-30 aged ones will have got started by writing cheesy games as kids for their {Commodore 64/Sinclair Spectrum/BBC Micro}

I'm a little bit younger than that generation (I'm 22), but I learned to program by taking apart a BASIC game where you were a ping pong paddle with super powers (called "Killer Pong" or "Pong Kombat" or something similar). The facts that BASIC programs came open source (since it is an interpreted language, sort-of) and that QuickBasic 4.5 came with a good built-in manual were great for me back when the internet was very, very young; and online documentation was scarce; and a seven year-old could not buy $30 programming books on zero allowance.

Re:Well color me impressed...

[IamTheRealMike]

Yeah, I'm 22 as well ;) I think we were really the last of the generation that had access to home BASIC. I learned really on the BBC Basic, QuickBasic was cool but quite limited compared to that, and after that it turned into a desert of gaming. VB never really was up to much in the gaming arena and wasn't free anyway.

Re:Well color me impressed...

[Jaeph]

"I'm a bit taken aback that MicroSoft is doing something to let hobbists flex their creative muscle, especially in such a (relatively) open way."

You know, we need to remember that MicroSoft isn't an evil person. They are a soulless corporation, and there is a difference.

Don't be surprised, try to think of the money making opportunity here.

-Jeff

next step

[Sardonis]

Now, someone please extract the binary signing key from this "XNA Game Studio Express".

Re:next step

[MichaelSmith]

Now, someone please extract the binary signing key from this "XNA Game Studio Express".

Maybe the games will run in a VM, so in a sense they will never leave XNA Game Studio Express.

Re:next step

[IamTheRealMike]

More likely, to sign the binaries you have to upload them to a protected Microsoft server and they take care of building/signing/distributing the actual binaries for you. Hence the $99/yr cost (which isn't much really, for a hobby).

Re:next step

[kafka47]

I just wanted to add that, ironically, if you want to do development using a very popular "indie-level" game engine you would choose the Torque engine. And to use it, you pay them $100. If you want their studio tools on top of that, it's another 100$.

The new MS-XNA Game Studio is based on this Torque engine. When you pay your $100, you also get additional content downloads, the studio package, listing on Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA), etc. etc. These are pretty decent extras, and it's cheaper than just using Torque!

There are obvious reasons Microsoft is doing this, but my feeling is that positives outweigh the negatives.

/K

Re:next step

[I'm Don Giovanni]

That's an amusing comment, but on a serious note, if someone does "hack" this in some nefarious way, then that'll be an example of the homebrew community cutting off its nose to spite its face, as it'll be a sign that they can't be trusted, and companies will be reluctant to do this stuff in the future. It would look very bad if, after years of begging MS to allow homebrew games, the moment they do, someone hacks the system.

Re:next step

[smbarbour]

Actually, you have that backwards. Torque runs on top of the XNA Framework.

XNA on the other hand is a games-oriented subset of the .NET framework (much like the Compact .NET Framework for mobile devices). This allows for code to be made that can run on both the x86 architecture and the XBox360's architecture (which unlike the original XBox is not x86).

There are plenty of other engines available that target .NET + Windows including some that are free (For a nice list, click here.) Targeting the XBox360 has a much smaller list, but this should bring some fresh talent to the table. Most future developers start with an interest in game development (which is ironic, since most games are far more complex than business apps).

Re:next step

[kafka47]

Actually, you have that backwards. Torque runs on top of the XNA Framework.

The "game engine" piece of the product, "XNA Game Studio", is the Torque engine. That's what I said in my post.

I had nothing "backwards", as I didn't touch the details of XNA at all. That's great that you wanted to do talk about that, but that has nothing to do with my post.

/K

Re:next step

[smbarbour]

If you read the article a little closer, you will see that GarageGames has made a version of Torque that is compatible with XNA Game Studio.

Please see this reference for details: GarageGames Announces Torque X For XNA

Re:next step

[kafka47]

If you read my post a little close, you will see that I am saying that when you download XNA Game Studio, you're getting the Torque engine. That was my point, the rest of your value-added stuff is interesting, but the criticisms at my reading ability are totally baseless.

/K

Re:next step

[smbarbour]

If you read my post and the reference, you will see that the Torque engine is now available from GarageGames for use within the XNA Game Studio. It is still a separate product. Can you provide any reference that says otherwise?

I am not criticising your reading ability. I am simply refuting your assertion that the Torque engine is included in XNA Game Studio. I have not found any evidence to support your assertion, but have found evidence to disprove your assertion.

Re:next step

[kafka47]

Yeeps, it seems that you're right. My information said that Torque was included, but it seems that this information is wrong. Thanks for seting me straight.

/K

Anyone know what's included?

[Xest]

Not found any details on what this kit actually includes yet. Surely to some extent the kit already exists via the free Visual Studio 2005 Express and the DirectX SDK? Apart from perhaps extra documentation and maybe some base framework for building for the 360. Is it going to be much more than just that?

Re:Anyone know what's included?

[medlefsen]

It will be an extended version of Visual C# 2005 express. That's right, it's all C#... sigh, ah well, guess I'll stick to my pc and visual c++
Here's the FAQ: http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/xna/faq/

Re:Anyone know what's included?

[glenrm]

Yes Managed Direct X, which you can use with C#. It may even be a scripted game language like Garage Games has. IMHO.

Developers, Developers, Developers

[hey]

Developers, Developers, Developers.

Re:Developers, Developers, Developers

[remembertomorrow]

I believe that you are missing ten occurences of that word in your post, sir.

XNA & Your Rights

[eldavojohn]

The XNA site they have a FAQ that doesn't really address my big question: If you create a game using XNA and distribute it to the community, who owns it? Are you forced into a licensing agreement? If so, is it one closer to the GPL or Microsoft's? This is very interesting because Microsoft may be claiming publishing rights to these games in the TOS for XNA.

So it could be a standard American Idol style:
1) trick contestants into signing away all rights they have to their work
2) let the community decide who is the best
3) publish their work and profit!

If you have preliminary questions about the XBox 360, you can find it on their forums.

Re:XNA & Your Rights

[andrew_j_w]

The BBC article about this quotes Microsoft executive Peter Moore as saying:

Microsoft would regulate the content for appropriateness and intellectual property issues, but users would own their work, Mr Moore said.

It definitely looks like 1 is not the case, and given that he also says "I'd love to send a royalty cheque to a kid" 3 could well be it.

Andrew

Re:XNA & Your Rights

[Tempest451]

I dont see the problem acknowleging the fact that you used Microsoft-provided software to create a game. If your THAT good, you would want that kind of recognition anyway.

Re:XNA & Your Rights

[Anonymous Coward]

The XNA site doesn't have a lot of details about the development studio, does it?

Any idea what XNA Build is for, though? Is it a full toolchain, or just a build tool? I don't understand just what they mean when they say that it "reduces the cost and complexity of production".

My impression from the gamasutra article is that Microsoft may be restricting game distribution to something like an Xbox Live channel (you couldn't burn a disc for a friend; they'd have to download it from Microsoft directly). That's not nearly as nice as enabling open distribution, though it's better than nothing at all.

Re:XNA & Your Rights

[steincastle]

You can have percentage of sales revenue if you opt to sale your game in the xbox marketplace, pretty straightforward business model. I bet M$ scored the goal against Sony on this, and a big one.

Re:XNA & Your Rights

[kamapuaa]

So it could be a standard American Idol style:
1) trick contestants into signing away all rights they have to their work

There's no tricks involved. Any person competent enough to develop a video game will be more than competent enough to quickly Google the rights they'll be allowed to keep.

Similarly, all the karaoke champions on American Idol know that the network keeps the rights to what they sing on American Idol, give me a break. The Clay Aikens of the world know that they'd never have the slightest chance of being rich & famous pop musicians without entering into such a contract, and do so of their own will. Seems a fair bargain to me, and if they didn't think so, well nobody forces them to sign the contract.

Re:XNA & Your Rights

[Anonymous Coward]

If I'm understanding you correctly it's like saying "You used my IDE to create program X, so your all your IP are belong to us"

Re:XNA & Your Rights

[Blakey Rat]

All the other "Express" products have absolutely no restrictions on the distribution of programs created with them. I'm guessing XNA is going to be the exact same way... I'm sure there's a contact email there you can ask.

Re:XNA & Your Rights

[Schnapple]

XNA isn't the program, it's the suite of tools/technologies to allow programs to build for PC and XBox 360. It's what they've been using to make Prey, Quake 4 and Oblivion debut on PC and XB360 simultaneously.

Re:XNA & Your Rights

[LetsKillDave]

There is no "licensing agreement" regarding games you create. It's your source code, you own it. Microsoft will not (and cannot) claim rights to your code. Don't be so paranoid. We're not evil. Really. I promise :-)

Also, the proper forums are here (you linked to "XNA Build" which is part of the XNA Family, but not what this topic is about):

• XNA Framework http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowForum.aspx?Fo rumID=846&SiteID=1
• XNA Game Studio Express http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowForum.aspx?Fo rumID=882&SiteID=1

note: as of this posting, they're not live yet. they will be in about an hour

David "http://letskilldave.com/" Weller

Re:XNA & Your Rights

[CapnGib]

The article is lite on details regarding distribution, most likely because they haven't really figured it out completely. But the sticking point is this: In order to prevent piracy of licensed commercial content, all binaries (including homebrew) will not be freely distributable. Homebrew distribution requires source code distribution, so for now end users must have a dev kit ($99/year) in order to compile and run "free" homebrew games/apps.

Which means it would be more like this...

1) Sell dev kit subscription to homebrew devs
2) Sit back and watch homebrew apps/games evolve (XBMC360?) and become popular
3) Charge end users $99/year to use "free" apps/games.

this is going to boost their sales

[torrija]

until now only studios that payed a high fee were able to program the consoles. The introduction of the Linux Development Kit for the PS2 (http://playstation2-linux.com/) was nice, but too restrictive for sharing your productions. Now everyone will have, at last, access to the hardware. And I'm sure people will not only develop games. Sony (and Nintendo) better counterattack to this, or they are going to loose quite a big chunk of market share.

Re:this is going to boost their sales

[DrXym]

The PS3 allegedly supports Linux in the shipping model. Of course this sort of feature is the first to go when the pips begin to squeak so who knows if its true. Certainly if it did happen, it could spell a revolution. It finally means the homebrewers get what they've always wanted and at the same time, Sony get to keep their copy protection and possibly classify their consoles as computers for tax purposes.

Sounds cool

[CrazyJim1]

I have a few gimmick games that I'd like to release for a console, like MMOPONG, or a MMO Castle Builder.

Re:Yaroze

[Anonymous Coward]

sigh. Is there ever going to be any slashdot thread about Microsoft releasing something where some idiot like you doesn't make a "The new Microsoft Fax machine is nothing but a waffle iron with a phone attached" post?

Already dead...

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA: by joining a "creators club" for an annual subscription fee of $99, users will be able to build, test and share their games

There, already dead before I was able to read to the end of the original article.

Nintendo

[Anonymous Coward]

has already announced that they will be allowing user generated content for the Virtual Console. I think its a great idea for both of them, and it will be interesting to see how the different companies approach it.

$99 a year?

[Rik Sweeney]

indie developers and students

They're kidding, right? $99 to develop a game that only a handful of people might play, and as a student having no income. You could get a job though to pay the fee, but when would you have time to code? And what happens if you develop the next Geometry Wars? Do you own the rights to have it published or will Microsoft just pay you royalties (that probably wouldn't make you back your $99 either).

Here's a suggestion, set up a page on My Space with a link to, say, a File Planet for the binaries.

I'd never subject Blob and Conquer to this.

Re:$99 a year?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude. $99 isn't that much for a year, even for a student with no income. Assuming you get a job that somehow pays a measly $5 per hour, that's 20 hours of work. Half a week. When are you going to have time to code? The other 51.5 weeks in the year, maybe.

Re:$99 a year?

[the_crowing]

$100 a year does seem a little steep for this service at first glance, and correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't it cost big bucks (like hundreds of thousands of dollars) for professional studios to get a liscence to develop games for consoles? The advantage for them is that their games are guaranteed to get published, but if this service allows students and independant developers to get their games out there in the Xbox 360 commmunity and if these developers are allowed to keep the rights to their products, then I think it is an excellent way for aspiring developers to get started in the industry, whether they get picked up by existing studios or start their own.

This could be a giant step for the game industry. Kudos to Microsoft.

Re:$99 a year?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're kidding, right? $99 to develop a game that only a handful of people might play, and as a student having no income.

You get to home-brew for your XBox 360 without having to hack it. That's gotta be worth something for the effort, risk and soldering saved. If you're into that sort of thing.

You could get a job though to pay the fee, but when would you have time to code?

Uh, seriously dude, $99 ain't much. Even minimum wage you'd have that in no time. Or skip one weekend's partying.

And what happens if you develop the next Geometry Wars? Do you own the rights to have it published or will Microsoft just pay you royalties (that probably wouldn't make you back your $99 either).

Almost certainly you will own the rights (MS do like developers, remember) but XBLA will be the only viable way to publish it. So they'll get their cut if you make money.

Here's a suggestion, set up a page on My Space with a link to, say, a File Planet for the binaries.

Unless you're in The $99 Club you almost certainly can't run them. Or if you meant your dev env and creation permissions (signing key?), well that's going to get revoked ASAP.

Re:$99 a year?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, yes, set a myspace for a professional company such as Microsoft. The world knows not intelligence like yours.

Re:$99 a year?

[intrico]

$99 a year is a HUGE privilege compared to the ridiculous barrier to entry that has been in place for console game development for so long.
I mean, look how much it costs for a PlayStation 2 development kit! (Of course, Sony stays mum about it, not mentioning it on their websites, but according to unofficial sources on the web, it costs approx. $19,000.00(US)!!!). I'm guessing PS3 development has a similar barrier to entry.
But seriously, it is about time that they "democratize" game development - especially with news of declining game sales, and people being less satisfied with the overall quality/fun-factor of new releases. Another reason this makes sense is due to the fact that we are seeing an inevitable convergence bewtween the console and the PC (In both technology and price, when you consider the PS3 price-tag!). This convergence makes it less feasible to reserve developer access to an exclusive few. (That last link mentions how the 10,000 Playstation 3 dev kits that were publicized went to only 208 companies!) Of course a company like Sony would argue about the amount of junk that will be produced when accessibility to Platform development is lowered like this, but there will inevitably be some gems produced that otherwise would not have made it to market, making it vastly worth-it. This could potentially give the Xbox 360 a huge advantage over the Playstation 3 in overall marketshare (that's all these companies really care about, no matter what they tell us) AND actually even benefit gamers at the same time.

Re:$99 a year?

[macrom]

$99 is an incredibly small barrier to entry compared to past offerings from Sony. How about the Net Yaroze at $750? Sure you got some hardware with it, but does that really matter when $99 still lets you create games that could be played on Xbox 360s worldwide? I hear you about being a college student. $99 can be a lot when your income stream is virtually non-existent. You could always do what my roomie and I did in college : sell blood and plasma. We got around $50 every few weeks for doing that, only we spent it on booze and not developing video games.

Re:$99 a year?

[CastrTroy]

$99 isn't that much for most college students. Seeing what most of them spend on beer, I think that most students who were really interested in actually designing a game would be able to afford it. It's the same cost as a single text book. When I was in college, there were many people who probably couldn't afford that, but there was also a lot of people who could have. I don't know which college you attended, but students of plenty of free time, and $99 a year doesn't break the bank for most of them. Maybe it's different over here in Canada, but I've seen many students spend way more than $99 on stuff that was way more worthless than an XBox 360 Dev Kit.

Re:$99 a year?

[elrous0]

The development kit alone is worth more than $99. Try buying a development kit from Sony or Nintendo sometime, if you think $99 is expensive. Development kits from them don't even have price tags, you call them up and NEGOTIATE one. If you even have to ASK what the "price" is from them, you can't afford it.

-Eric

Re:$99 a year?

[DAharon]

My guess is that the $99 dollars is just tacked on to a service they were going to offer regardless. Sure the big studios pay a lot for development kits, but remember that they are going to be profiting off their games. In this case, not only is MS profiting from these small developers, but when they make their games available through MS Live (I think that's what it is called), MS will charge for each and every download and pocket every cent. Not that this doesn't detract from the bragging rights or possibly valuble experience that these developers may get in return. From the MS perspective its free money.

Re:$99 a year?

[Transmogrify_UK]

but when they make their games available through MS Live (I think that's what it is called), MS will charge for each and every download and pocket every cent. Not that this doesn't detract from the bragging rights or possibly valuble experience that these developers may get in return. From the MS perspective its free money.

I don't remember reading this bit. Can you let me know where you found this information that Microsoft will be charging for these homebrew games?

Re:$99 a year?

[p0tat03]

As a college student and part-time indie developer, $99 is _nothing_ to pay for this service. We've been locked out of the console arena this whole time and now it's open to us. Not mention MS has also promised the sub-$1K professional licensing which I presume will allow you to shed the XNA Game Studio shackles and allow non-XNAGS-subscribing users to play the game (i.e., full-time XBLA status).

Hell, I paid more for my 3D/physics engine ($150, TrueVision3D, ridiculously awesome piece of software).

Re:$99 a year?

[theStorminMormon]

They're kidding, right? $99 to develop a game that only a handful of people might play, and as a student having no income.

Are you retarded? If the student can't afford $99 how the Hell do they have an Xbox360? Let alone a PC? Practically NO student is that poor.

You could get a job though to pay the fee, but when would you have time to code?

What are you smoking? Get a job and not have time to code? At $5/hour you have $100 in 20 hours. That's a week of part-time work. Then quit. Seriously - have you ever been to an American college? In the last 20 years?

I'm no MS fan, but $99 is a trivial amount of money for someone to get a dev kit AND a chance to release the game. If your game is any good at all, you're friends at the very least will like it. They will tell their friends. And guess what? They all have xbox 360s already and your code "just works" on their consoles (assuming it works originally).

I really don't know what your issue is. You have to work really hard to find a downside to this announcement. If MS were going ot steal people's rights to the games, that would be an issue, but it seems that's not the case. So I say: congrats for indie gamers. I want to know where I can download the dev kit and get started.

-stormin

Re:$99 a year?

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

They're kidding, right? $99 to develop a game that only a handful of people might play, and as a student having no income.

Around here a new console game costs (the equivalent of) $83. Please find some actual problem with this offer, and complain about that.

Re:$99 a year?

[Blakey Rat]

Most people spend $480+ a year on cable TV. Dev kits that game developers buy usually are in the range of 5,000-10,000. Either way you look at it, this is dirt cheap.

Plus, you can build the game for free and publish it on PC to as many people as you want. The $99 is only if you want to make a Xbox port as well.

Re:$99 a year?

[DAharon]

It's pure speculation. But they are in the business of selling software. Their entire business model revolves around software as a commodity.

Re:$99 a year?

[johncadengo]

Do you own the rights to have it published or will Microsoft just pay you royalties (that probably wouldn't make you back your $99 either). I'd never subject Blob and Conquer to this.

Maybe you should read the article before jumping to conclusions.

Microsoft would regulate the content for appropriateness and intellectual property issues, but users would own their work, Mr Moore said.

Re:$99 a year?

[supermank17]

As a college student myself, I really have to ask what you were thinking when you made this post. $99 a year is next to nothing, even for a college student. Most college kids spend more than that on snacks in a year. Most gamer type people spend more than that on their World of Warcraft subscriptions each year. Heck, $99 dollars is cheaper than just about any textbook I've bought in the last 4 years. The price is not going to be a barrier here.

Re:$99 a year?

[Anonymous Coward]

professional studios to get a liscence to develop games for consoles? The advantage for them is that their games are guaranteed to get published

Hahahahahahaha.... sob sob sob (*wipes eyes*)

- a professional developer.

Re:$99 a year?

[sog_abq]

thats nothing, I bet most people around here spend half of that MONTHLY for their cell phones

Re:$99 a year?

[westlake]

They're kidding, right? $99 to develop a game that only a handful of people might play, and as a student having no income.

$99 gets your game on an XBox. Windows XP is free.

Re:$99 a year?

[Anonymous Coward]

MS (as of now) will not be charging to download a homebrew game.
BUT an end user will have to be a member of the dev-club, at a cost of $99/year, in order to download/compile/run the "free" homebrew games. And I think you need a computer running XP also, assuming the dev-kit runs on a pc, not on the xbox360. (well not so much assuming as they mention something to that effect)

Remember...

[Anonymous Coward]

Net Yaroze anyone?

This will be a .NET environment

[plaisted]

The programs you write with this product will not need to be signed (at least not with the same key everything else for the XBox 360 is). This product is going to be a .NET based development environment. So the .NET runtime will be signed, and will run on the console, and will run your game, which you wrote in C#.

The current announcements don't seem to spell out that this is based on .NET, but I'm sure it is. Microsoft has mentioned before that getting .NET on the XBox 360 was part of XNA. Also, see this FiringSquad article. They mention that 95 to 99 percent of the code from the windows version of a game could be retained in the X360 version. Also:

Microsoft indicated in their presentation that they feel the Xbox 360 security, both in hardware and software, will be able to eliminate any threatening code from getting out on their consoles and they claim there will be automated and non-automated ways to detect such code.

Managed code seems like the only reasonable way to enforce this security.

How fun!

[nukeade]

What a great educational tool! What got me into programming was a kid was the fact that I could make games very similar in quality to my Atari games on our old 386. I wonder if they'll offer an API simple enough for beginners to pick up.

~Ben

mod chips?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since it is now possible to write homebrew for xbox 360s through standard channels, is there now any legit reason to hack an xbox 360?

Re:mod chips?

[Nerdfest]

There's still a legitimate requirement t back up games you've bought, to cover the possibility of damaged disks. Some are claiming that the 360 frequently damages disks, although it seems to be greatly exaggerated. An MS policy of replacing damaged disks at a nominal or zero fee would eliminate the backup requirement as well though.

There will remain the requirement to hack the box just to see if it can be done though ...

Re:mod chips?

[jonwil]

Show the 360 users a 360MC for the 360 that can play the media formats XBMC can play (i.e. all the stuff that microsoft cant or wont touch) and maybe they will give up trying to make a mod chip.
Oh and there needs to be MAME360 and MESS260 too to cover the emulation side (and with the power of the 360 CPUs you could certainly emulate anything with 8 and 16 bit CPUs including things like Neo-Geo and CPS2 that required too much memory and CPU for the original XBOX and probably a number of games using 32 bit CPUs too)

Provide those few apps in a way that doesnt require spending big bucks to play them and a sizable chunk of the "I want a mod chip to run homebrew code" market would be satisfied.

Re:mod chips?

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, whats wrong with your PC for all that guff, you spanner.

Good 'ol game designer

[Anonymous MadCoe]

Reminds me of things like HURG: http://www.nonowt.com/magfold/revsfol/hurg.html That was good fun in the day, would get a simple game going without much programming. Although I mostly found programming more fun than playing....

Impressed

[Life700MB]

Am really impressed by this cool move from the Redmond's boys, but got a lot of questions over it. How will it bypass the anti-copy game protection? Will it be a true SDK with full access to all the key components or a crippled down OS with no ability to get the juice from the optical disk nor 3D CPUs like the SONY's attempt with the ps2?

--
Superb hosting 20GB Storage, 1_TB_ bandwidth, php, mysql, ssh, $7.95

Re:Impressed

[miro f]

I very much doubt it would be a full SDK or otherwise it would be difficult to convince bigger companies to part with their hard earned money for the full SDK

Re:Impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

I very much doubt it would be a full SDK or otherwise it would be difficult to convince bigger companies to part with their hard earned money for the full SDK

I don't see why not - they just need to include extra stuff in the full kit e.g. a real XBox 360 in debug mode. If it's easier to debug code on the full kit, or if the full kit has better performance than a PC-based-emulated debug environment, then it's still worth the time saved.

Re:Impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm at Gamefest, and it sounds like the XNA Framework gives you unlimitted access to the CPU, GPU and memory resources, but only gives you access to specific regions on the hard drive and memory units. This is so that they can provide an indie-marketplace feature without worry that people will post games that systematically modify or delete your files and profiles.

Potential

[goldenratiophi]

Does this open the pathway to the first home-brew gaming console viruses?

Re:Potential

[remembertomorrow]

My first thought after seeing this article title was:

Microsoft to Enable Last Measure OS on Xbox 360

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Measure#Other_La st_Measure_Projects

Still waters

[Anonymous Coward]

This seems to have little to do with your layman hobbyist being able to make some hobbyist game and more as a legal reparte for the one legal argument supporting xbox drm and code signing workarounds -- homebrew software. The fee is too high for any hobbyist to consider seriously.

The only thing that will convince me that this is not just something their legal department thought up, is if they will provide a way for independent developers to (relatively) cheaply offer their 'hobbyist' software for download on xbox live marketplace.

Totally Off-topic

[__aahlyu4518]

Frontpage was filled with a huge Slashdot broadband advertisement. Maybe it's time to have slashdot.org redirect to slashdot .com i.s.o the other way.... ;-)

Let me get this straight

[mrjb]

Instead of paying additional XBOX game developers a salary, MS is going to ask XBOX developers to pay *them*?
Brilliant. I'm going to start a company right away, and I'll make sure to hire lots of developers to pay me.

Re:Let me get this straight

[jhildo]

As far as I know, developers already pay them to develop on the Xbox platform. Dev kits cost money and MS gets a piece of every unit sold. Its called "the console business model".

Re:Let me get this straight

[medlefsen]

It's completely free to develop games for windows but then if you want the games to be available for download through xbox live you need to pay a $99 subscription fee. Also it appears there may be some kind of revenue sharing.
From http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/08/14/AR2006081400041.html:
Peter Moore, vice president of Microsoft's interactive entertainment business, said individuals will own the games they create using the tools and that the company will do revenue sharing deals with people who create games for the Xbox 360. "I'd love to send a royalty check to a kid," said Moore, who added that Microsoft hopes to get the tool kit into high schools.

Re:Let me get this straight

[hmccabe]

I believe this business plan was originated in Soviet Russia.

Re:Let me get this straight

[Tim Browse]

Instead of paying additional XBOX game developers a salary, MS is going to ask XBOX developers to pay *them*?

You should be a proper commercial Xbox developer then. Microsoft pays all of their salaries.

Oh no, wait...

Re:Yaroze

[mrjb]

hmmmmmm... waffles

Homebrew & Backups & ... Linux :)

[jbssm]

Well, I don't fully understand if you can just buy a developer kit and make an application to the XBOX 360, but doesn't this mean that it will become very easy to run homebrew and backups in the XBOX 360?

Even if the code is digitally signed to the creator and Microsoft enforces him not to create these kind of applications, just look at what happened to the PSP, there were a bug in the PSP was exploited to make a patch to downgrade the firmware until a firmware that Sony itself had made with a nasty (or very nice ... depends on your perspective) bug that allowed to run any application.

Now, you could just make a game and even without intention, that game could have a bug that could be exploited the same way on the XBOX 360 and really Microsoft couldn' prosecute someone just because that person is a bad coder an opened an exploit to the XBOX 360.

Re:Homebrew & Backups & ... Linux :)

[EnglishTim]

I'd guess that it'll only run CLR-based code, i.e. C# or managed C++. You'll be able to run any code you've got the source for, but not any arbitary binaries.

Re:Homebrew & Backups & ... Linux :)

[EvilMonkeySlayer]

It's not that simple, this doesn't allow you to write native code for the machine. It runs in an abstraction virtual machine layer akin to Java.

Unfortunately because this whole XNA Express thing uses VB.NET or C# (it doesn't seem to specify in the article) any games written will take a performance hit over native code.
The thing about the PSP was that it's native code accessing the hardware, so you could exploit that. C#/VB.NET programs don't touch the hardware, so if they crash it's no big deal.

Re:Homebrew & Backups & ... Linux :)

[TheRaven64]

It's a console. If it crashes, it shouldn't be a big deal anyway; the only thing you lose is the game you are currently playing.

I'm not really sure what the point of this is. If I were writing a homebrew game, I would pick SDL and OpenGL so as many people as possible could play it. I might pick DirectX if I still owned a Windows machine, but I would target the PC, not the console. I would spend the $99 on a few USB joypads, if I wanted a console-like experience from it.

Something like the PSP is a different matter. It's a very different form-factor to the PC. You could pick up something like a GP32X, but the PSP has more powerful hardware (which might make it more or less interesting, depending on why you are writing the game).

Re:Homebrew & Backups & ... Linux :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Managed C++ is fast, about 6 times faster than managed c# on certain operations. Memory allocation in managed code is very fast. The new operator in managed code is only about half the speed of salloc, and many times faster than malloc. And you don't have to deal with heap fragmentation, or overriding the new operator to improve performance.

Also, managed code will outrun native code unless the native code is compiled for a specific CPU and you have multiple distributions of your binaries for different CPU architectures.

This is what all console cokmpanies should do

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought my psp just to play homebrews. The system is now worthless to me. I have bought two games, numerous movies. That is all it is good for is watching movies on the bus.
I may now buy a 360.

Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Alternatively you can just write games using SDL or OpenGL that run on multiple non-crippled platforms! Why pay microsoft for the priviledge of being disempowered?

Who says Slashdot always bashes Microsoft?

[John Nowak]

The comments in this thread show that, when MS does something good, Slashdot (with the exception of a few idiots) heaps on the praise.

Re:Who says Slashdot always bashes Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just a sign that the slashdotters are short-sighted and fickle. As soon as someone points out that this will spread "evil" DirectX among students and independent developers instead of beloved OpenGL, the slashdotters will start crying again.

Re:Who says Slashdot always bashes Microsoft?

[Blakey Rat]

True, but we also have the obligatory "chair throwing" joke that hasn't been funny for over 6 months now, even though somehow it still gets modded up. And of course we have the expected "but... but... but... Nintendo!!!" that's in every gaming thread even when it's grossly off-topic (as it is here.)

So it's a little nice that Slashdot is giving some credit to MS, but now let's work on getting the moderation system to actually get rid of off-topic and non-funny crap.

Re:Who says Slashdot always bashes Microsoft?

[Slashcrap]

The comments in this thread show that, when MS does something good, Slashdot (with the exception of a few idiots) heaps on the praise.

The "idiots" have actually read the terms, conditions, fees and restrictions which will apply.

Whereas the non-idiots have just believed the MS press release.

In summary, you are using a definition of the word "idiot" of which I was not previously aware.

Re:Who says Slashdot always bashes Microsoft?

[Cheapy]

I once saw an article on /. about the few billion dollars that Bill Gates gave to charity. The people on that thread were saying how LITTLE that was to him.

That thread alone counteracts the praise of this one.

Re:Who says Slashdot always bashes Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

The comments in this thread show that, when MS does something good, Slashdot (with the exception of a few idiots) heaps on the praise.

Idiots, eh? Those that forget the past and present conditions of getting screwed over by Microsoft in a rich variety of ways (do you need the links?) and say, "Oh thank you Microsoft, what a wonderful thing you've done!" when a few coins are tossed their way are the real idiots, or at least are seriously memory gimped. Those guys piss me off. Fuck Microsoft, use your memory, bash freely!

Maybe this is how the idea came about?

[Nicaboker]

Accountant: "Bill, we need to find a way to pay all these developers so much money." Bill: "I know, I know, but how can we do that?" Accountant: "Well, we could take a lesson from....." Bill: "from?" Accountant: "Linux and the open source community" *Covers head* "Please don't hurt me." Bill: " How DARE YOU......wait a minute, that might actually work!!" Accountant: "Really? you think so?" Bill: "Yeah, make it so we can let other people make our games for us and NOT have to pay them."

Microsoft Can't Be Serious

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's do some math...

400 dollars for the base console.

50 dollars a year every year just for online - what is that 250 dollars over the life of the console?

100 dollars for WiFi - other accessories are just as ridiculously priced.

200 or so for the ability to play HD movies

50 bucks for an extended warranty - don't let anyone fool you into thinking a 360 owner doesn't need them

And now 100 dollars just to be allowed to do what Sony will let you do for free with the standard Linux distro included with every PS3.

And to make it even worse, no one but the tiny number of people willing to pay the same 100 dollars will even be able to run your stuff.

And even worse you are stuck with Microsoft's shitty devtools - Visual Studio and the Xbox DirectX - yeech! The worst possible way to do console development.

And all that effort and waste of cash just to be able to fool around with the botched ATI graphics system on the 360...

Re:Microsoft Can't Be Serious

[EGSonikku]

OK, i'm sick of this "PS3 has Linux and you can code out of the box!1!"

It isn't true.

Yes, the PS3 "runs" linux.

Embedded Linux.

You will never 'see' it. You will see a nice shiny PSP style XMB menu. You will not be able to
code a damn thing (legitimatly). Sony has never once said you would be able to. Stop spreading
old shot down rumors.

Re:Microsoft Can't Be Serious

[EGSonikku]

Also, if you are going to whine about pricing, you may want to rethink arguing in favor of the PS3... ;-)

Re:Microsoft Can't Be Serious

[iapetus]

In comments made to Japanese game website Impress Watch, and translated by GameSetWatch contributor Shou Suzuki, Kawanishi noted: "Because we have plans for having Linux on board [the PS3], we also recognize Linux programming activities... Other than game studios tied to official developer licenses, we'd like to see various individuals participate in content creation for the PS3."

It seems that Sony is happy to let basic application and game construction take place without access to the extremely sophisticated rendering and physics libraries available to licensors - Kawanishi further commented: "When a game studio enacts development on a PS3 by entering a license contract, SDK libraries... will be presented, and various technical support given. In contrast, when using Linux World on the PS3... support will fall to the lowest level required, and you must solve and work on things by yourselves."

Gamasutra

So, Sony has never once said you would be able to, except when they did.

Re:Microsoft Can't Be Serious

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, you're completely wrong. It's a 'desktop' Linux distribution with compilers etc. - the whole idea is to encourage software development on Cell.

See:

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?st ory=9290

MS is missing the REAL opportunity

[elrous0]

The games created with XNA Game Studio Express will not initially be available to regular Xbox 360 users

That's the quote in the article that really disappoints me. MS's desire for control and fear of truly "opening" up the game market is a real hindrance here. It's an area where they could REALLY get the advantage over Sony. Since Sony's online offerings have always sucked and they're MUCH bigger control freaks than anyone else, they could NEVER compete with this program if MS opened it up and let the indies market directly to 360 users (with MS taking a percentage of each sale for their bandwidth costs and to help offset the 360 hardware costs).

-Eric

Re:MS is missing the REAL opportunity

[Fulg]

The games created with XNA Game Studio Express will not initially be available to regular Xbox 360 users

That's the quote in the article that really disappoints me. MS's desire for control and fear of truly "opening" up the game market is a real hindrance here.

That was a sticking point for me also, but you have to keep in mind that "normal" games have to go through a certification process in order to standardize certain behaviors (controllers, profiles, saved games, multiplayer, etc) and ensure a certain quality level to the end user. More than likely, indie games will not go through that process. By limiting the audience to other indies, MS doesn't pollute XBLA with crappy/buggy/tasteless games.

By that same token, MS also gets to control what is available to end users. If someone ports MAME to X360, then what's the point of paying for PacMan, Galaga, Joust, Gauntlet, etc on XBLA? And I'm sure Nintendo wouldn't be happy if someone ported ZSNES, etc. You get the idea.

That being said, I'm sure that gems in the "indie space" will be noticed and offered a chance to be certified & available as real games on XBLA (similar to Mutant Storm and Marble Blast).

Re:MS is missing the REAL opportunity

[Blakey Rat]

... or maybe it just means Microsoft doesn't want the bad press when you decide to release "Nazi Jew-Killer Columbine Shooter 3.1" to the public, and you're a bit paranoid.

I don't think it's unreasonable for Microsoft to actually hire a few people to play through these games and take a look at the content before they let every random Joe download them.

Re:MS is missing the REAL opportunity

[isellmacs]

This is a very solid point that I think alot of people knocking the $99 port subscription are missing.

When you download the kit for free, and begin designing the game, you're using your own system, resources, bandwidth and storage space. It costs MS only the bandwidth you use to download the kit in the firstplace.

Once you want to port the game, however, chances are you are going to have to do it via xbox live. That means now it's a ton of bandwidth, resources and storage space on the part of MS. Each game might not be that much, but they have to take into account the sheer number of games, and inact some sort of fee-based model for two reasons:

1) To re-coup the cost of hosting the games on xbox live. This includes bandwidth, storage space, servers and as the parent pointed out, a little bit of QC.

2) To filter out the crappy games. Honestly, if you download the kit and spend 6 months developing a bomb game, it might be worth the fee to upload your game. Since it costs you money to host this, it's less likely you'll pay $99 for a half-ass shitty game.

Shortly followed by THIS game...

[atrocious cowpat]

"Chairs on a Motherfucking Plane"

• See chairs on a motherfucking plane
• See a plane containing motherfucking chairs
• Hear Steve scream "If'n I ever see another motherfucking chair on this motherfucking plane I'll motherfucking kill those motherfucking chairs, Motherfucker! Let's motherfucking rock!"
• See how the Game is cut down to a "G"-Rating.
• Hear Steve say: "Oh deary me - there seem to be an awful lot of chairs on this plane. I wonder if they might look more appealing if I arranged them a little different, what do you think, Tonto? Let's do it together."

Lets take bets...

[Winterblink]

... on how long it will take someone to make a program that wrecks 360s.

Re:Lets take bets...

[nusuni]

One hour, three minutes, five seconds. That is all it will take. I'm a bit surprised the 360 didn't have viruses out before it was released.

Re:Lets take bets...

[baggachipz]

It's already been done, they called it Chromehounds.

Re:Lets take bets...

[The-Bus]

I thought Dead Rising already came out last week.

Re:Lets take bets...

[Winterblink]

I own the game. Never had any problems with it myself, though I do hear that some folks are. Most aren't having any issues other than connectivity ones, which are easily resolved.

Re:Lets take bets...

[unuselessj]

It will come in the form of a BOINC client which will also let you cook eggs.

You got it!

[twitter]

Brilliant. I'm going to start a company right away, and I'll make sure to hire lots of developers to pay me.

Make sure to give them "dumbed down" tools and only let people who pay you use the results. Call it the "Ricky Rat" Club or something. Prediction: another big xbox flop.

Re:You got it!

[Anonymous Coward]

willy, someone posted about you in this article. You should feel proud.

Fee Required?

[duerra]

I didn't see it in the article, but is this fee a requirement in order to have your game published? It could be a model similar to how the MSDN subscriptions work. You can develop with the Visual Studio programs and tools without having an MSDN subscription, but it's there for you if you like. Just a thought....

Re:Fee Required?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can develop with the Visual Studio programs and tools without having an MSDN subscription, but it's there for you if you like.

Yes, this reminded me a bit of the MSDN program. But MSDN is more than 'if you like' - it's a licence to run test versions of basically all of Microsoft's software, plus live versions of the latest OS and Office if you go for a high enough subscription level. And you get the full version of Visual Studio thrown in. And, IIRC, it's the only way to get hold of the premium versions of Visual Studio 2005 and the Team Foundation client.

Alterior motives?

[UnknowingFool]

I don't keep up with XBox360 game development but is this a subtle hint by Microsoft to get more developerment on the Xbox360? Seriously, I don't know. I can see this as a tactic.
"If you don't develop more games, someone else will . . . maybe the gamers. And we'll get their games and their money. And your little dog, too!"

I can finally do that game about the sassy robot!!

[elrous0]

Finally, my dream of designing a mediocre videogame is about to come true!

-Eric

Painful distribution....

[james_bray]

From the XNA FAQ:

Q: How exactly can I share my 360 game to other 360 users? Will my game only be available to people with the XNA "Creators Club" subscription? Will it be available to all 360 users that have an Xbox Live account?
A: There is currently no supported way to share binaries on the Xbox 360. Currently, there are four requirements that must be met in order to share a game targeting Xbox 360 which is developed with XNA Game Studio Express.

      1. The individual you are planning to share the game with must be logged in to Xbox Live and have an active subscription to the XNA Creators Club
      2. The receiving user must have downloaded the XNA Framework runtime environment for the Xbox 360
      3. The receiving user must have XNA Game Studio Express installed on their own development PC
      4. The game project, including all source and content assets, must be shared with the receiving user. The receiving user then compiles and deploys the game to their Xbox 360.

Doesnt exactly sound like a barrel of laughs to distribute to friends etc...

Re:Painful distribution....

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesnt exactly sound like a barrel of laughs to distribute to friends etc...

Yeah, you have to hand over the complete source code to someone else with a development environment. That's crazy talk. That's the kind of thing that killed the whole open-source movement :-p

Re:Painful distribution....

[amliebsch]

The game project, including all source and content assets, must be shared with the receiving user. The receiving user then compiles and deploys the game to their Xbox 360.

Amusing to see Microsoft not just pushing but requiring open-source development!

Re:Painful distribution....

[Reapman]

Although I agree with the other responses that this is open source tactics and good in that respect, I can't see how requiring all those steps will be good if your someone developing and actually wants lots of people to play your game... When I read this I initially thought cool I could get my game out there and if it's good enough could have it downloaded by millions of people (in theory) now it's if my game is good other developers can compile it and play it for a bit. Not bad per say, but not what I had hoped for either. This reminds me more of the PS2 Linux kit which, for 90% of PS2's out there, was useless. :-/

Re:Painful distribution....

[SnarfQuest]

4. The game project, including all source and content assets, must be shared with the receiving user. The receiving user then compiles and deploys the game to their Xbox 360.

Is there anything to prevent MicroSoft from "innovating"[*] it?

[*] A MicroSoft term meaning "to copy someone elses work and claim as their own".

Re:Painful distribution....

[IamTheRealMike]

Yeah, that's pretty crappy I agree, but on the other hand it would encourage you to - you know - invite your friends over to play on your own console. It's not like this means only one person can ever play it. Write a good multiplayer game and friends/family can still have a blast playing it. And it sounds like fixing this to provide a Nintendo Virtual Console alike online wouldn't be too hard for them, who knows, if the program takes off and there are some good games there then hopefully they'll extend it so any XBox 360 owner can download the games (for a small fee or for free).

Re:Painful distribution....

[topham]

It probably just needs to be signed and they haven't made a tool for it yet.

I'm sure someone else will make a tool in short order and make it at-least easy enough to distribute and install the games. They won't be able do anything about requiring the development tools and subscription. But so what?

If it catches on enough there will be some pressure on Microsoft to make it easier to share and distribute the projects. I think this is an excellent idea, although I expect the whole API to be rather limited and inappropriate for many projects.

Re:Painful distribution....

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have a link to this FAQ? I cannot find it anywhere.

Re:Painful distribution....

[jonwil]

I expect that the runtime environment (which may well be a port of the .NET runtime allowing for managed code) is signed by microsoft to run on the 360 in the usual way. And then, when you buy the kit, executables signed by your kit are locked to your copy of the runtime and engine and will not run on any other runtime unless signed by the matching devkit.

Given that microsoft has valid business reasons to prevent just anyone from running whatever homebrew they want (for example, microsoft probably has BIG business reasons to prevent XBMC 360 from becoming availble to just anyone), I see that the best way to allow greater distribution is to allow those developers who produce games that meet microsofts standards to have their game signed somehow and distributed over XBOX live. That way, developers can have their game more widely distributed but microsoft gets to prevent anything they dont like (i.e. emulators, network apps, media players that play formats MS doesnt want being played, games that don't meet MS standards etc)

Re:Painful distribution....

[amliebsch]

Yes. "Open Source" != "Public Domain." You would still retain the copyright.

Re:Painful distribution....

[gabebear]

Not letting people share there stuff easily is the point of the $99 fee and the strict conditions for sharing software. MS is already pissing off a lot of the real game studios by EOLing MDX and forcing them to convert to this new XNA framework. If MS decided that they were going to allow people to distribute games for a one time fee of $99 they would quickly drive away the big game makers and MS would have to leave the market eventually. MS relies on licensing fees to mitigate the losses they make elsewhere on the 360.

Think about it from MS's view as a company; this is likely an attempt to get students relying on MS products so that if they do become game creators they will already be using MS tools. Free games for the 360 would not be the objective since that would only make them lose money.

Re:Painful distribution....

[Darkforge]

http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/xna/faq/

Re:Painful distribution....

[gonzoxl5]

It would be great if you could share with any 360 user who has downloaded the framework, would still be great as a value add even if it was just limited to all users with an active Xbox live subscription

Unfortunately the way they are placing this makes it sound like a nice way for M$ to develop content on the cheap for a new subscription service - an extra $99 per year to get access to content that is developed for them for free by enthusiasts does not sound like an initiative that that is giving to the community (sounds more like exploitation).

Re:Painful distribution....

[everythingeverything]

2. The receiving user must have downloaded the XNA Framework runtime environment for the Xbox 360
3. The receiving user must have XNA Game Studio Express installed on their own development PC

Ew. I remember people espousing Java as THE programming language of the future... but those runtime libraries, eh? Where is all the (consumer) Java software today? (Notwithstanding Azureus).

I'll give it a looksee but C++ is still way more attractive to me for GD. Web on the other hand...

Another take on the situation

[glindsey]

Isn't it feasible that they have released this feature to try and kill the "I modded my XBox to make and play homebrew games" argument? I remember reading a while back that somebody once showed Bill Gates a modded XBox, with a couple homebrew games, a few emulators, and XBox Media Center on it, and his response was something along the lines of "how can we leverage this idea into future products?" Apparently, now they have.

Re:Another take on the situation

[Anonymous Coward]

The way I heard it, he was shown a hacked PSP.

Great move.

[laparel]

This is really great, I might just use my PS3 savings for 360 if Sony won't follow through. I can just see indie companies coming with great innovative games competing the big publishers driving more innovation or atleast cost down. Them, plus a handful of those angelic-selfless coders contributing to the community with free games. Even ad-supported games will be more feasible - created by the corporations for promotions, etc. One problem 360 might face though is when companies would go after Microsoft about widespread copyright infringement brought upon the many spin-offs/rip-offs of games, or even using trademark characters of big publishers games etc.. Like say if I create a game called 'final fantasy 7 - new world' and use ff7 characters etc, and distribute it freely. Will I be facing square-enix lawyers the next day? And if this becomes rampant, will square-enix lawyers go after Microsoft. Anyways, I think Sony is in trouble.

MS does get it some times

[edremy]

"Developers! Developers! ...."

It's easy to make fun of Ballmer, but remember that he's *exactly* right here. MS has always made the development tools cheap and available.

Many years ago, I worked in a university department that mostly ran OS/2. This was back in the days of the OS/2 Workplace Shell and NT 3.5- OS/2 was in many ways vastly more sophisticated than NT. Queue up NT4- I went by the campus bookstore one day to look at software.

Sitting on one shelf was the OS/2 dev kit. ~$500, academic price. Then you needed OS/2 with the TCP/IP stack, which was another $200. Both were in ugly boxes to boot.

The other shelf had Visual Studio C++. $99. Came with a *free*, *full* copy of NT4. Nice pretty box. I knew at that instant OS/2 was doomed. $99 is an impulse purchase, even for college students. Hey, why not give it a try? $700, not so much.

Let's move up to today. You've got this. You have Visual Studio Express: free. Student prices for VStudio are still dirt cheap, and my understanding is that the development kits for XBox aren't really all that much compared to Nintendo/Sony's.

MS gets it, or at least some small part of it.

LOL

[james_bray]

> The financial cost is there because, psychologically, people who have a vested financial interest in something tend to follow through with it more often and more completely.

Haha. Nonsense. The financial cost is there because they want to make money of desperate fat people!

Some good can come of this

[stevenm86]

The immediate thought is to make a wrapper to run linux or signed code or maybe a bootloader to run commercial copied games (as if you can't already do that). But, you will probably be running your game on top of an existing MS environment instead of straight on the CPU like a commercial game. Still, such an engine would be quite complex, and as sure as we know Microsoft, there are bound to be many corner cases or unchecked buffers. This makes another fairly accessible product in which a flaw can be found which can be used to run native unsigned code. Maybe... one can always hope.

Re:Some good can come of this

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, it would really be great if some asshole hacked this system so that MS shut it down for everyone else. Stop being such a selfish punk, you fucking moron.

Re:Some good can come of this

[stevenm86]

(a) Why would they shut it down due to a flaw in their own code? Why not issue an update? Besides, how is shutting it down going to prevent existing users from taking advantage?

(b) I do not even own an xbox 360, or any modern gaming console for that matter. And even if I did, there is still no need to resort to name calling.

Re:Yaroze

[neus]

Yaroze was neither the only nor the first 'consumer' console dev kit, Develo from NEC and WonderWitch from Bandai predates it ( just to name a few ). All those "Microsoft/Apple/Linux/Whatever is a copycat!" stories are getting very old very fast ... Check you're facts first ... ohh right, you don't have Wikipedia at Troll U =/

Donkey Kong replacement...

[SuperKendall]

Chairface Chippendale?

Probably full access

[SuperKendall]

Basically they just have to give you dev tools that support DirectX 10 - for Microsoft there is really no effort involved as they just tweak Visual Studio to support the 360 (which it probably already does).

The real question for me is the first, how will you actually be able to load games on your system and share them as well? I am assuming you'll have to share them through Live, but I wonder if you'll hvae to use the paid Live. It could well be that you would "share" it through Live even for testing it on your own 360, that way the signing process could be kept on Microsoft's servers.

MS would think that's great!

[Belial6]

Microsoft would think that is great! It would be even better if it became the dominent OS. Remember it will cost $99 EVERY year to run this game called 'Linux Kernel' on your Xbox. They have never been able to charge that much for their own OS.

Of course this may just be the beginning of the great PC lockdown. I suspected that the point of the XBOX was to move people away from the open PC architecture that we all know, to a closed architecture that they can control. It seemed obviouse. Make a closed x86 box, and sneak it into households as a console. This would avoid all of the nasty monopoly laws they would face if they started selling standard hardware at a loss in an attempt to control the hardware market.

When they switched to PPC, it appeared that my theory was wrong. But maybe not. Of course this could also play into the theory that Xbox has seriously hurt Windows. The reason being that a very large section of the PC buying pubic only needs windows for their games. Everything else they need is available on Linux. When MS bought a bunch of top game developers and moved them away from Windows and onto the Xbox, they lowered the value of Windows.

Re:MS would think that's great!

[russ1337]

I suspected that the point of the XBOX was to move people away from the open PC architecture that we all know, to a closed architecture that they can control.

I heard the PS3 was going the other way. I heard PS3 was going to open up and allow hombrew in some shape or form, i guess this article is M$'s way of doing the same thing, but closed....

My bet is that the most open system will win.

Re:MS would think that's great!

[Belial6]

They are both open. If you compare them to the console market. If you compare them to the PC market, they will both be very closed. The thing is that consoles are now powerful enough to handle most home computing tasks. This means that if people move over to the consoles for home computing, they will be ripe for vendor lock in, given that the entire console industry is predicated on making money with vendor lock in. Just pay attention to the number of times you hear the statement "It's their system, so they can do what they want." in reference to console makers. Anti-competative and anti-consume behavior that would never be tolorated in the PC world are not only allowed in the console world, but embraced by many of the console fanboys.

Re:MS would think that's great!

[mrchaotica]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Microsoft and Sony's console strategy is designed as an end-run around the "general purpose-ness" of the PC.

I'm glad you mentioned it and got modded up, though -- the more people pointing it out, the less likely MS and Sony are to succeed at it.

Re:MS would think that's great!

[rtb61]

There is one main a difference between sony and microsoft, sony only wants revenue from games and should open office or firefox run on the PS3 it doesn't affect sony, in fact it helps, of course the affect on microsoft would be some what different.

Bold Move

[blueZhift]

With apologies to Ford, Microsoft is making a pretty bold move by essentially embracing the homebrew community. Some may not want to pay the $99 bucks to be able to share their games, but this sure beats the heck out of the constant arms race that is usually waged between console makers and people want to run homebrew or pirated software. One could also argue though, that this is a desperate move by Microsoft to spur more Xbox 360 development. But given that Microsoft on the whole has always been developer friendly and makes some of the best development tools in the business (at least for Microsoft platforms), I suspect that this was always a part of their plan. For me personally, this is a dream come true! I've always wanted the chance to write something for a console, but the price in money, for professional kits, or effort, for the homebrew console scene, has been too great. I've twiddled a bit on the PC, but consoles are where the real action is right now.

Master Chef?

[Quiet_Desperation]

Master? Hmmm... how about something even tougher... like, oh, I dunno... Iron?

Re:Master Chef?

[steveo777]

I see where you're going, but "Iron Baking" reminds me waaay too much of my grandmother's biscuits and gravy.

Microsoft still doesn't get it...

[xtermz]

...Ever this attempt to 'be more open' is still closed minded. A f'in subscription fee? XP only game development? Microsoft, still trying to suck every dollar out of every possible area.

No subscription fee. Open the API and allow game development from any platform ( yes, even *nix ). Allow others to share the games, for free.

Heres where you make your money. If you want to sell your games, you need to buy a license to brand it as an Xbox game. Then they can still get their kickbacks, and the hobbyists don't have to sell their souls.

Re:Microsoft still doesn't get it...

[p0tat03]

One of the consequences of FOSS is that now everyone wants everything for free. God forbid you pay for a library! What's with the sense of entitlement here?

MS has a brand image to keep with the Xbox. To allow unfettered distribution of homebrew is a disaster. Remember that there are certain types of content that MS would rather keep off Xboxes, even if it wasn't authorized or endorsed by MS. Adult games, games featuring direct explicit illegalities... knowing the internet and YouTube, we have an immense ability to create content that the Xbox brand does NOT want to be associated with. There is absolutely nothing wrong with MS wanting control of distribution, if only for this purpose alone.

So the idea will be to put a crutch on homebrew distribution, so that MS can pick the cream of the crop for official endorsement, and probably un-handicap the game for full XBLA distribution, free or otherwise. This will allow you and your buddies to have fun throwing pr0n and other shenanigans on the Xbox360, but disallow you from doing any real damage through mass distribution.

And what's with the "XP only" game development? It's the .NET Framework for cryin' out loud. *AND* it's Managed DirectX! This concerns Linux/UNIX zealots none. We're not talking about a C++ library for OpenGL here, this thing simply *cannot* run in 'nix. The Xbox360 runs DX only, and one of the concepts here is getting rid of complex C++ and throwing in simpler C#, none of these quite fit with 'nix eh (Mono doesn't count)?

Do you seriously think MS is intending on sucking $100/year out of every developer? Are you seriously believing that MS intends the subscription fee to be a profitable industry? There won't be enough devs out there for this to be anything but a drop in the bucket to MS. I suspect the fee is more of a barrier to entry requirement to keep your everyday kids out and encourage some serious development - without setting the price as high as to keep interested (and qualified) parties out.

Re:Microsoft still doesn't get it...

[Blakey Rat]

What exactly would make you happy? Microsoft giving YOU $100 every month and providing backrubs for developing for 360?

Re:Microsoft still doesn't get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

How about $99/year homebrew dev-kit, FREE runtime environment for end-users (through live) and $0.99 homebrew binary downloads through live (50/50 split MS and dev-kit owner).

Give homebrew devs an incentive to produce quality games/apps. The whole $99/year fee for end-users is kinda outta hand. That combined with jumping through hoops to get a free homebrew app severely limits the distribution potential for homebrew.

Sure homebrew on xbox (linux/xbmc) is pretty popular despite requiring the hurdle of a mod (hard or soft). But the added benefit of backing-up games makes the one-time cost/inconvenience of a mod worth it for most. Besides I really like the nice-and-neatness of having a collection of games "installed" on the xbox so I can load a game using nothing but a wireless controller without leaving the friggin couch.

Who cares?

[ameline]

Obviously the poster I was responding to who wanted to port linux cares. People who want to explore how the system really works care. And people who want to make games that compete with native running games will care too.

But me? I don't care -- I'm not likely to be using it.

Re:Who cares?

[misleb]

Obviously the poster I was responding to who wanted to port linux cares. People who want to explore how the system really works care.

I hardly think that writing managed code that runs on both Windows and XBOX will give one a chance to explore "how the system really works."

And people who want to make games that compete with native running games will care too.

Yeah, I'm sure gamers will be climbing over each other to run Joe Bob's Tetris.NET on their shiny new XBox-360. :)

-matthew

Re:Who cares?

[tepples]

Yeah, I'm sure gamers will be climbing over each other to run Joe Bob's Tetris.NET on their shiny new XBox-360. :)

Nit: Tetris is a trademark. Joe Bob's tetromino game would be called something else.

Obligatory DNF post

[DrMorris]

... and mine will be called "Duke Nukem Forever"!

probably because blob and conquer looks like shit

[Anonymous Coward]

n/t

Fairly obvious ploy...

[RJNFC]

This is pretty ridiculous. MicroSoft wages a constant war against open-source applications, and they've obviously begun to realize that FOSS is potentially useful in games, too. The mod community in Half-Life is probably the most obvious example - some originally free mods wound up getting commercial releases (although still were free to download), and returned in HL2 as paid products. But of course, rather than just make your console that much more appealing by letting developers jump on, a move that would get lots of talent from people who want to show off for XBox 360 fans as well as PC gamers, MS is actively charging anybody who wants to give them free intellectual property, and making it harder for that property to distribute anyways. (TFA: "The games created with XNA Game Studio Express will not initially be available to regular Xbox 360 users" but may eventually enjoy a wider release, or at least the popular ones will.) So the monolithic overlords of Windows, and now gaming (they hope), want us to pay them a subscription to make games for their platform, and even if we do, nobody but other devs will be able to play them? Sounds like somebody's combined a great money-making scheme with a shitty implimentation of game development.

Open source!

[Anonymous Coward]

4. The game project, including all source and content assets, must be shared with the receiving user. The receiving user then compiles and deploys the game to their Xbox 360.

Woah, Microsoft is actually ENCOURAGING open source development!

Re:Open source!

[perkr]

No no no,

It's "shared source" not "open source"

;)

Hmmm

[androvsky]

Really looking forward to playing Xbox Media Center on a 360. The only real intellectual property problems with the original is it was only legal if you already had the compiler, which pretty much nobody had. But would I pay $100 a year for XBMC on a 360? Maybe, depends on how Sony handles the PS3 homebrew development.

Just when my contempt for MS was at its peak...

[AmazingRuss]

...they go and do something cool like this. Hope its not crippled somehow...

Re:Just when my contempt for MS was at its peak...

[Anonymous Coward]

To quote Mr. Gupta:

Yes, sir. As requested, it's full of bugs, which means people will be forced to upgrade for years.

Now, where are my "+5 MS Bashing" points..

(just kidding :)

Re:Just when my contempt for MS was at its peak...

[medlefsen]

You mean like forcing you to code completely in C#? Ah well... maybe next time eh
http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/xna/faq/

And...

[Erwos]

One of the nice things about this is that you shouldn't even _need_ a 360 to do initial development on. A moderately good gaming PC and a wired 360 controller ought to tide you over until you've decided whether it's time to pony up the $99 fee (eg, game is finished, time to optimize for the 360).

I think this is an absolutely phenomenal idea, and I'm very excited about doing some hobbyist development with it.

About the 99$ fee.

[JFMulder]

The way I see it, there is nothing preventing me from learning about best practices on developing for the 360, then making my game for the PC with complete 360 controller support and then when my game is done, then I can buy into this program to compile it on the 360 and debug from there. You don't have to develop the thing for the 360 exclusively. 99$ a year is cheap when Sony charges you 50K and Nintendo 2K for a development system. And last time I heard, the Linux kit for thePS2 had dreadfull support. On the other hand, what Microsoft is releasing is a free version of what the devs uses. There is going to be great support for this.

I can't wait to download it!

Ohhhh so thats what too so long.

[kemo_by_the_kilo]

I should have figured this but.....
Thats what took them so long to release dev tools... they just needed to figure out how to price it.

they already pay *them*

[Anonymous Coward]

3rd party companies pay for Dev Kit cost and MS get a cut on every sale of a game.

Did you not know this already?

WHAT'S INCLUDED

[solomonrex]

Actually, the article I saw said that templates for standard game types (i.e. fps's rpg's, etc.) would be included with the kit, GarageGames-style.

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

The parent is a real MS dev with real info. I just want to make sure a mod sees this and mods it up accordingly.

you haters are incredible. this is GREAT news.

[PeeweeJD]

why all the hate?

did you guys say "oh great now we can have shitty mods" when the iD guys gave access to the WAD files?

How about when Valve let people have access to the half-life engine? Isn't counterstrike still the most played online game? I'm willing to bet that a serious portion of the half life cds have been sold just to play counterstrick.

What happened to the guys who made the Desert Combat mod for BF1942? Oh yeah, they got hired by the company and improved the game.

Look at the success of Xbox Live Arcade. You have a plethora of PC game developers making games and selling them on the Xbox system. These are all guys who could never make console games in the past.

MS made a bunch of tools to help developers make their PC games work on 360 and vice versa.

So now MS wants to let even more people in, and you guys bitch about it? Why because you have to pay $99? or because some kid will make a donkey kong clone with steve jobs and bill gates? or because you have to have a 360?

I'm willing to bet that some kick ass games come out as a result of this. Maybe some kid gets hired by a company and makes a truly kick ass game like Geometry Wars. Maybe some game comes out and gets noticed and picked up for Arcade. Who knows.

If you dont want to do it, keep the $99 in your pocket. But only good stuff can come out of this.

.Net Only

[Lemmingue]

According to http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?Pos tID=633584&SiteID=1, you're forced to use .NET, no C/C++ allowed. Now they're forcing the amateurs to use .NET, since the pros don't do it.

Re:.Net Only

[Anonymous Coward]

You can write managed c++ if you want to in .net. It might even allow you to write unsafe c++ code. Who knows?

That's why slashdot uses lame icons for MS topics?

[I'm Don Giovanni]

Oh please...
When slashdot starts using the actual Microsoft logo for Microsoft topics and the actual Windows logo for Windodws topics (rather than the Gates-Borge and Cracked Window icons), then I'll believe that slashdot gives MS a fair shake. MS and Windows topics are the only topics for which slashdot uses derogatory icons (or icons with editorial spin of any kind), and as long as that's the case, slashdot has no credibility regarding MS stories, and slashdot open proclaims that fact by using those immature icons.

For those wondering ...

[Sonic McTails]

From the Microsoft XNA FAQ:

Q: What does XNA stand for?
A: XNA's Not Acronymed

It seems this is what Microsoft said that they were learning to embrace open source software!

Re:For those wondering ...

[jsrlepage]

directX New Architechture perhaps?

Horrible Hoops to Jump Through to Play a Game

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently, in order for other people to run your game, they must download your source and game resources, build the game on their PC and then download it to their Xbox 360.

My first title

[leabre]

I was thinking about a Jackie-Chan style... use your environment to destroy your foes kind of game, aptly titled "house of flying chairs".

Thanks,
Leabre

Funny

[Lord Kano]

In addition, by joining a "creators club" for an annual subscription fee of $99, users will be able to build, test and share their games on Xbox 360, as well as access a wealth of materials to help speed the game development progress.

So let me get this straight.

Homebrew Developers are supposed to pay Microsoft for the priveledge of making new content for their system that will be given away for free but that Microsoft can claim when they list the number of titles available on their platform when they advertise to compete with the PS3?

I suppose that $99.00 per year is better than Sony is going to charge to develop for the PS3, but I don't think that this is any real reason to celebrate.

LK

User created games, or just textures?

[tepples]

Nintendo ... has already announced that they will be allowing user generated content for the Virtual Console.

Clothing in Animal Crossing and emblems in Mario Kart don't count.

Re:you haters are incredible. this is GREAT news.

[Anonymous Coward]

What happened to the guys who made the Desert Combat mod for BF1942? Oh yeah, they got hired by the company and improved the game.

Haven't played much Battlefield 2, have we?

Erm..

[spoco2]

Nice post... but do you need to pay the $100 just to run software other people have coded in this platform? I seriously doubt it. What kind of homebrew game developer world is that where anyone who wants to run your game/app has to pay $100 a year to do so?

I think it's only $100 a year for the developers.

Re:you haters are incredible. this is GREAT news.

[PeeweeJD]

yes I have. I guess adding a cool military theme and a cool commander mode and way more vehicle support is not improving it. let me guess, you think they should have stayed with the WW2 theme right?

In-Game Advertising

[lilfields]

Does anyone else see the fact that Microsoft much like with Google's adsense with web developers, could capitalize off of game creators with advertising? Microsoft could implement their in-game advertising into this program, giving developers a small cut; which in the end means more money (for Microsoft and the developer), and more developer motivation. I think such a move could spell a tremendous new outlook to small game developement. Does anyone else see the same happening?

Linux isn't possible, stop dreaming

[Myria]

Even if Microsoft wanted to, Linux is not possible on the Xbox 360, at least without a new version of the hardware.

On the 360, the page table is managed by a hypervisor etched into ROM inside the CPU. A page is never marked as executable unless it has passed an RSA signature check. The kernel does not have the authority to mark a page as executable.

Sure, you could get the Linux kernel running, but how would you get bash, gcc, perl, ls, cp, ....... working without also signing them?

Microsoft's FAQ talks about C# only. Gee, what a surprise. I think this means that the dynamic recompiler is inside the hypervisor, since it can't be anywhere else. You can bet that all programs will have to be verifiable. Otherwise, exploits ahoy.

Melissa

boothbabes

[angrymilkman]

And they had boothbabes at the gamefest party!!! I mean what more could you want of a game development framework??

Re:That's why slashdot uses lame icons for MS topi

[Tim Browse]

I've been reading slashdot for a while, and while I find the groundless MS bashing (or groundless bashing of anything) tiresome, I'd have to say that if slashdot 'cleaned up' their icons, it would probably be an indicator to me that it's becoming a site I don't want to read any more. Having a sense of humour is not a failing.

Yes, there's a silly Borg picture of Bill Gates for MS stories. Deal with it.

Missing the boat

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft (initially) made their money because everyone bought Dos/Windows to make their hardware & programs work. Now think about the big picture here. Microsoft cannot produce a single OS that suits every body's needs. You might require an OSS o/s or an o/s that runs on your handheld, etc.

Enter .NET. .NET apps can be run accros multiple o/ss. And like before you still need to license MS technology to make your programs work (only its now .NET and not Windows). The only reason MS doesn't allow you to rush out and buy .NET for your Linux PC is that there arn't yet enough killer apps for .NET and most people (end users) wouldn't understand what they were buying. Expect MS to license the technology to Linux vendors/Handheld vendors, etc... in the future (like you have with Java).

I'll bet a bright spark at MS once said something like, "lets port DirectX to consoles, create a huge library of games and then hold the console world to ransome!".

Thats why smart people read the license before they develop in a tool :)

Re:Missing the boat

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently you didn't read the license agreement either.

"There is no "licensing agreement" regarding games you create. It's your source code, you own it. Microsoft will not (and cannot) claim rights to your code. Don't be so paranoid. We're not evil. Really. I promise :-)
Also, the proper forums are here (you linked to "XNA Build" which is part of the XNA Family, but not what this topic is about):

XNA Framework http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowForum.aspx?Fo rumID=846&SiteID=1 [microsoft.com]
XNA Game Studio Express http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowForum.aspx?Fo rumID=882&SiteID=1 [microsoft.com]
note: as of this posting, they're not live yet. they will be in about an hour

David "http://letskilldave.com/ [letskilldave.com]" Weller"

Re:That's why slashdot uses lame icons for MS topi

[Blakey Rat]

... except it's not funny. No more than the "chair-throwing" jokes are that get posted into every goddamned thread. The Bill Gates as borg thing wasn't funny back in 1997 when it was first made, and it's certainly not funny now.

I think it's more likely that they made this set of icons in 1996 in Paint or some other crappy image editor, and they've been too lazy to change any. That's why most of the icons are constantly out-of-date, and why they asked (when the site was being redesigned) that the new site fit in with the old icons.

Besides, I seem to recall that other companies that are constantly ridiculed (like SCO) have normal logo icons. Why does Microsoft get the special treatment?