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."
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
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
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.
The comments in this thread show that, when MS does something good, Slashdot (with the exception of a few idiots) heaps on the praise.
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.
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.
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.