~360 Homebrew: XNA Game Studio Express

[Sir_LANs-a-lot]

Thanks guys! - I'll stick with 2005 for now then!

[Mark]

Eurogamer live text feature covering Microsoft's GDC Keynote speech. They've just announced the roll-out of community made XNA games. Awesome.

It's a little vague on details, but apparently demos of a few games will be going up later today, so even if this is a partial roll-out it looks like the full thing's probably not too far off.

Some excerpts:

"For the first time ever this year you'll be able to have community games distributed via Xbox Live." "For free! Say for free!" someone near me shouts. Shut up you div.

Chris is unphased. "With great power comes great responsibility," he says. Good old Spider-Man. He's going to let the community manage the content: create, submit, review and play. "I'm not going to be the arbiter of what the community does." The community's going to have control, within basic ground rules. Democratising game distribution. Woo.

"We've talked about 'Create' a lot, so let's talk about 'Submit'." Your XNA Creator Identity will act like a Gamertag, capturing the progress of your products. You can then roll along blood, injuries, hostility, cruelty etc. on slider bars to tell people what your game's about. Then the game goes out to peer review from other creators.

They will be looking for prohibited content - IP infringement, etc. Probably child porn too. You're not allowed any of that child porn. Then: "10 million people on Xbox Live get to play your game." This means there'll be a thousand games on XBLA by the end of the year, Chris reckons.

Clapping. Chris says if you're anything like him, you'll want to play it. You can go to Xbox Live Marketplace right now and download demos of Jellycar, Dishwasher and other community-developed games as trial versions. Go for it, kids. [We can't find them - Ed]

Bertie tells me the games aren't on Live yet - Chris wasn't specific, but he did say that they'd be there and mentioned that we should go for them "after the speech". Anyway: "This year we complete that vision - we democratise game creation."

[Mark]

Here's a link to the community games faq on the creator's club:

http://forums.xna.com/thread/46554.aspx

[HGFB]

Q: Can I sell my game on Xbox LIVE Community Games? What is the revenue split?
A: Yes, in the future you will be able to offer your game on Xbox LIVE Community Games for sale. More information will be available closer to the retail consumer launch of Xbox LIVE Community Games this holiday.

Your move Sony and Nintendo

[teamonkey]

Can anyone see the demos?

[Mark]

Can anyone see the demos?

Ah - got it! There's a launcher available from the marketplace. Download that, then go to your games list. There should now be a new XNA section in the twist menu thing. Navigate across to that, and then hit Y to open the list of available games.

I'm downloading The Dishwasher right now...

Edit: Just had a brief go, and it's rather nice. Will give the rest a pop later.

[fog]

Awsome news. I may even be tempted to have a dabble myself now that I have a proper distribution channel without having to go the full XBLA route.

Isn't this going to have a crippling effect on XBLA sales though? And why would anyone put themselves through that timely and expensive certification process when this apprently easier and free option exists and it still allows you to sell your product?

[Dave]

Isn't this going to have a crippling effect on XBLA sales though? And why would anyone put themselves through that timely and expensive certification process when this apprently easier and free option exists and it still allows you to sell your product?

I'm assuming it lets you sell, but that hasn't been detailed yet. Anyone know if XNA creators will be able to sell their games for money?

How much is normal XBLA certification?

It probably won't affect XBLA sales if the quality is up there. Bad XLBA games will probably see lower sales. It's like a video store going from 100 titles to 1,000. People are still going to rent movies, but the obscure ones will probably see less rentals.

Most of the seven demo's released today are, well, pretty basic. Dishwasher is an obvious exception; fun as hell. Though all seven games are lacking in polish (getting there, but not quite yet). A few crashes too in some of then.

A team of us are working on an XNA game, and we aspire to have it for sale on marketplace someday. Won't say anything about the actual game yet though, other than that it'll be a lot of fun.

[RiK]

Can anyone see the demos?

Nope. I downloaded the loader app but when I select it in the Games blade I just get a blank screen.

[benedictw]

I'm assuming it lets you sell, but that hasn't been detailed yet. Anyone know if XNA creators will be able to sell their games for money?

They will. Assuming the lawyers get out of their funk.

http://blogs.msdn.com/xna/archive/2008/ ... games.aspx

[PaulCunningham]

Well I submitted my game, got accepted, did a load of work converting to 2.0, bought a world wide distribution license for the music, sent off all the stuff and then waited for the big announcement. Got an email back about 3 days ago saying, erm, jeez sorry, we had too many games, so we had to cull a few. Bit too much like Defender yours.

Cheers!

[RiK]

It seems to have sorted itself out now and the demos are loading..

[Dave]

Well I submitted my game, got accepted, did a load of work converting to 2.0, bought a world wide distribution license for the music, sent off all the stuff and then waited for the big announcement. Got an email back about 3 days ago saying, erm, jeez sorry, we had too many games, so we had to cull a few. Bit too much like Defender yours.

Cheers!

That stinks. It is defender-ish, but is WAY better than some of the demo's they have up there now. The jelly car thing (kinda like line rider, except you don't make the levels) is, well, one level, not fun, and done in about 15 seconds.

[Dave]

I'm assuming it lets you sell, but that hasn't been detailed yet. Anyone know if XNA creators will be able to sell their games for money?

They will. Assuming the lawyers get out of their funk.

http://blogs.msdn.com/xna/archive/2008/ ... games.aspx

Wicked.

[Mark]

Well I submitted my game, got accepted, did a load of work converting to 2.0, bought a world wide distribution license for the music, sent off all the stuff and then waited for the big announcement. Got an email back about 3 days ago saying, erm, jeez sorry, we had too many games, so we had to cull a few. Bit too much like Defender yours.

Cheers!

That stinks. It is defender-ish, but is WAY better than some of the demo's they have up there now. The jelly car thing (kinda like line rider, except you don't make the levels) is, well, one level, not fun, and done in about 15 seconds.

That does indeed suck, Paul. Sorry to hear that. Bah!

The Jelly Car game does have a bunch of levels though. It just manages to hide them quite well. You select different ones by pushing up and down on the game set-up screen. IIRC there are tiny arrows above and below the name that suggest this. Well worth a second look - I only played a couple on 360, because I've played through it on PC. The physics seemed a bit more temperamental on the 360, but (if it's got the same set of levels) it shows a lot of potential.