XNA Studio Express / Build Games for 360!

Details here.

Looking forward to the beta. I'm interested to see what the development platform looks like.

This is so cool....

Aug 30th I'm away on holiday and have been banned accessed to computers by my other half!

this is quite possibly the coolest thing that Microsoft have come out with in a while.

i guess this is where the bill gates quote "how can we interact with this community" comes into play when he was shown a modded xbox.

: drool:

Probably the uni will have a couple of these available

Cool... reminds me of the Net Yaroze, but better!

I think these kind of things need to be poularised. There was a golden age of veideo game development when home compuiters became widely available. People sat in there bedrooms and hacked otu some amazing games, whiel today everythign seems to be yet another version of an existing concept puublished by some huge software house. Homebrew is where the truely original ideas will come from!

I found it kinda strange, they they kept saying "On The XP Platform".
Does this mean theres no Vista support?

Chadk wrote:

I found it kinda strange, they they kept saying "On The XP Platform".
Does this mean theres no Vista support?

I don't see why Vista couldn't be supported. It's really just .Net CLR 2.0 + DirectX 9.

Tensor wrote:

Cool... reminds me of the Net Yaroze, but better!

And much much cheaper!

Tensor wrote:

I think these kind of things need to be poularised. There was a golden age of veideo game development when home compuiters became widely available. People sat in there bedrooms and hacked otu some amazing games, whiel today everythign seems to be yet another version of an existing concept puublished by some huge software house. Homebrew is where the truely original ideas will come from!

I don't think there's a lack of original ideas currently. It's just that there's no easy way for people to buy those games -- until Xbox Live Arcade.

But being popularized doesn't mean an open market, either. Remember, there's still a gate keeper, MS, and I'm not saying that's a bad thing. Just there's still one.

Didn't make it to GDC? Click here to view an online version of the XNA DVD distributed to conference attendees.

Download the XNA Build March 2006 CTP.

View the XNA Overview presentation which introduces XNA Build.

View the XNA Build Advanced presentation.

Visit the XNA Build Forum.

This is great news for aspiring Game Developers everywhere; Microsoft is lowering the cost of entry into this exciting field and with a larger developer community will come more imaginative games for everybody.

 

Although i find this very exciting, buuuuuuuuuut, without being the party pooper:

• After being published who holds the rights ?
• Wich license will be used ?
• What "access a wealth of materials to help speed the game development" really means ?
• What is this different from a Visual Express, DirectX SDK and XNA SDK  bundle ?

Is really worth paying $99/y to be able to only share my games with other "creators club" members ?

I don't get the point of this ...

It's about learning Game development.

This is great news.
How much time before they announce WPF for the 360?

neus wrote:

• After being published who holds the rights ?

Your game will most likely be published on XBox Live Arcade for $5-$10 -- which isn't much risk to neither you or MS. You & MS would probably negotiate a contract -- but since MS didn't really pay for the development cost, they'll probably only want a cut of sales, not ownership of the game.

neus wrote:

• What "access a wealth of materials to help speed the game development" really means ?

There'll be a game-focus MSDN-like site.

neus wrote:

• What is this different from a Visual Express, DirectX SDK and XNA SDK  bundle ?

Do develop XNA games, you'll need VS Express, DirectX SDK, XNA SDK -- this'll probably come bundle when you sign up.

neus wrote:

Is really worth paying $99/y to be able to only share my games with other "creators club" members ?

I think this is a requirement to get your game on the Xbox 360. As for why MS wants the $99? Probably to keep out the riff-raffs

Minh wrote:



neus wrote: Is really worth paying $99/y to be able to only share my games with other "creators club" members ?

I think this is a requirement to get your game on the Xbox 360. As for why MS wants the $99? Probably to keep out the riff-raffs

Thats what i think too, thats why the PC version is completly free.

I just don't like the idea of restricting my audience to fellow club members; the idea of 'wasting' several hundred hours of free time to target my game to the xbox platform, just to find that it will only be available to a couple hundred fellow developers doesn't really sound that  appealing to me ,  maybe it will only be a temporary thing until they sort everything out, or at least i hope so.

It's not really about the money, i think $99/y ( or ~75€ for me ) is more than reasonable - its just two nights out in the city.

neus wrote:

I just don't like the idea of restricting my audience to fellow club members; the idea of 'wasting' several hundred hours of free time to target my game to the xbox platform, just to find that it will only be available to a couple hundred fellow developers doesn't really sound that  appealing to me ,  maybe it will only be a temporary thing until they sort everything out, or at least i hope so.

The club will let you play your game on the Xbox 360 -- but by no means, does MS wants the Xbox 360 to be an open platform like the PC. They have lots of $$$ invested and they want to be the final arbiter on the quality of the games that appear on the Xbox.

Chadk wrote:

I found it kinda strange, they they kept saying "On The XP Platform".
Does this mean theres no Vista support?

Who cares? I am just really really happy that they got rid of the need for a 'DEBUG' xbox which could ONLY run unsigned code; which was needed to develop/test/run your homebrew on the original XBOX.

Also, getting ahold of an original XDK (Xbox Developers Kit) was laborious, painful and ultimately not very satisfying.

phreaks wrote:

Chadk wrote:I found it kinda strange, they they kept saying "On The XP Platform". Does this mean theres no Vista support?

Who cares? I am just really really happy that they got rid of the need for a 'DEBUG' xbox which could ONLY run unsigned code; which was needed to develop/test/run your homebrew on the original XBOX.

Also, getting ahold of an original XDK (Xbox Developers Kit) was laborious, painful and ultimately not very satisfying.

Don't be mistaken that you can develop first-class citizen games for the Xbox 360 with XNA. For the near terms, if MS likes your game, it will be distributed via Xbox Live Arcade, not on a DVD. But that's not necessarily a bad thing.