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Microsoft Publishes Free XBox Development Tools

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the compile-once-crash-twice dept.

prostoalex writes "Microsoft announced the release of free XNA Game Studio Express tools for developing C# games that run on both Windows and XBox. They're also selling XNA Creators Club subscriptions, which, similar to MSDN subscriptions, offer access to sample code and additional documentation. Also, Microsoft is explicitly aiming towards uniting the Windows and XBox development platforms: 'You will have to compile the game once for each platform. In this release simply create a separate project for each platform and then compile them both. Our goal is to allow as much code as possible to be shared between those two projects, allowing you to use the same source files in both projects, but platform-specific code will need to be conditionally-compiled.'"

4 of 221 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Not quite free.... by Jazz-Masta · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's a lot cheaper than a Gamecube, Wii, PS2, or PS3 dev kit. This is a major step forward. Indie developers can use it, even if it is $100 (which, let's face it, is not much money...two games worth) and if they create something worthwhile they can pay more to get it full licenced for release.

  2. Non commercial by edwardpickman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It strictly allows only non commercial development and no distribution including free over the net. There's is another commercial version that'll be released early next year but you still face the Microsoft bottle neck. You can't release commercial games unless they approve of them and take a health chunk of the profits. It'll allow you to develope for the Xbox 360 at a much lower risk but there are no guarentees you'll be able to release the game on Xbox 360. Microsoft still retains the final approval and demands their pound 'O fleash.

  3. Re:Not quite free.... by ribond · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Way to fail to own it. They gave you something free (yes, there are caveats) or at worst dirt-cheap, that others sell for much more. You can now choose -- your wallet or your "must-irrationaly-hate-ms" reflex?

    God help you if the indians get close to you with a few "gimme" rounds of texas hold'em. You'll never break free.

    ...you see where I'm going with this?

    it's almost like this truly vicious practice that many shareware vendors have (wolves in sheeps clothing, these guys). They offer you up a fantastic game as a trial version and then ask you to pay for it if you love it.

    bastards.

    I can imagine that Sony and Nintendo are none to amused at this, so I'll just sit back and wait for them to file antitrust complaints.
    ...yeah. but it's MS that stifles innovation. What antitrust issue do you see here? The 2nd place player in a field tries to gain an advantage by giving things away... I'd come up with an analogy but they seem to obvious. I'll let you run with it.
  4. Using Other Developers To Profit by phantomcircuit · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The one thing that Microsoft does extremely well is document and provide tools to develop software for windows.(free tools such as visual c# express offer non-commercial developers a cheap IDE). It's why there is a much larger number of applications written for windows than for Unix like systems.

    By applying the same principles to the Xbox 360 they might just find that more people use the system because of what they can do with it, not because of the numbers.

    The applications make the system useful, not the other way around.