Microsoft releases XNA tools for 360 homebrew
Back in my young days, creating games was the cool thing to do. As you started up your Commodore 64, you were immediately greeted by an inviting “Ready” prompt that just yelled out that you should take control of the thing and bend it and squeeze it to do exactly what you wanted it to. Through the years the art of programming and thus game development has become an elitist affair, requiring expensive IDEs and multiple years of learning and experience. Now Microsoft reopens the arena for homegrown games by announcing XNA Game Studio Express, aimed at allowing small developers to create their own hit games on the Xbox 360.
The XNA Studio line of home development products, to be released as a free download this holiday season, was already first discussed at the Game Developer Conference in March, and as promised at the time more info was delivered on the Microsoft-hosted Gamefest 2006 event currently in progress in Seattle. As the press release states:
XNA Game Studio Express will democratize game development by delivering the necessary tools to hobbyists, students, indie developers and studios alike to help them bring their creative game ideas to life while nurturing game development talent, collaboration and sharing that will benefit the entire industry. […]
XNA Game Studio Express will be available for free to anyone with a Windows® XP-based PC and will provide them with Microsoft’s next-generation platform for game development. By joining a “creators club” for an annual subscription fee of $99 (U.S.), users will be able to build, test and share their games on Xbox 360™ and access a wealth of materials to help speed the game development progress. This represents the first significant opportunity for novice developers to make a console game without a significant investment in resources.
Several universities have already announced that they will be integrating XNA Studio courses in their curriculum this fall. Partners like 3D software moloch AutoDesk and XBLA pioneer GarageGames showcased their involvement in the project as well.
Will XNA Studio be Microsoft’s other secret weapon against modders taking over their consoles? As stated explicitly by firmware hack pioneer Robinsod in our exclusive interview at the time: “If MS would sell me a home developers XDK that allows me the opportunity to write code for what is a fantastic piece of kit then I would have no reason or excuse for doing this.” Well, the product will even be free, so what reason remains for the world’s most talented hackers to continue trying to break the 360’s security?
Are you interested in homebrew games appearing on Xbox Live Marketplace? Will you be developing yourself perhaps? Discuss below!
Kudos to frontieruk for submitting the news.
Wow. Just wow! This is great news.
Well, Say hello to damaged 360’s due to viruses planted in the homebrew games!!
What a _very_ negative view of this excellent announcement.
How are you ever able to burn the game on disc when the 360 only accepts the original with SS on it?
Well FFS I tell it like it is
and say hello to people takeing your credit card/check card # if you download “bad” homebrew games
I’m pretty sure MS will have to check the game in someway.
Do you work for Sony?
He’s not even bitching or talking shit about MS…
Awesome, maybe I’ll even pay the $99 to checkout the homebrew games, if the quality is there. I’ve already downloaded Garage Games’ ‘Torque Game Builder’ to try some things.
Yuh this rox. As Trigger said MS will probably give any code the once over before releasing.
Wish I had $99 and a clue how to make games tho.
Interesting announcement.
There’s no mention of distribution methods here but briefly suggests the best will go on Market Place. Does this mean the rest of it won’t be distributed via live? What about any restrictions on what can be produced. Surely MS won’t be allowing homebrew code to go up without some sort of big brother eye scanning over it first.
It’s all unclear. My suggestion is that the best will be able to get their stuff online after thorough checking at MS Quality Control yeah.
Yep, the code will still have to go to MS for certification/release. Otherwise there would be 1000’s of pong/invaders clones on marketplace within the 1st week
To those only thinging of negative things like viruses and stealing credit card numbers.
The language is C#. Since it is a managed type, you will only have access to the framework Microsoft provides. So no low level access. And probably no process execution access.
So, in other words, no viruses, no credit card number theft.
I’m assuming you’d just use MS points to buy the games. Then MS would pay the developer a portion of that. How are credit cards going to be stolen?
I think they meant by using aggresive code to steal this info.
Lets see sony top this
Does this mean that other types of applications can be built? Web browsers, etc?
This is really great for the 360. We can see some original games on there. Even software maybe that will enhance the system.
They can be built for sure. Whether they can be redistributed and how: big enigma.
I’d be interested in using the capabilities of the XBox 360 hardware as a data visualization engine.
Mmmm…
Realtime, live network traffic flow graphs in stunning 3D with full screen AA.
I was reading on the MSDN website that we’ll be able to get our hands on a CTP version on Aug 30th. My only question is why is’nt the XNA framework compatible with VB.NET? Does’nt make sense to me.
they should also give us the source of the 360 Dashboard so we can sustumize it. add features and such,
Signed up for the beta, I’ll be creating something and keeping a dire-ee so stay tuned for that.