Slashdot Mirror
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."
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
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...
http://www.reeb.freeserve.co.uk
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.
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.)
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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/