f13.net

The Decision That Levels The Playing Field

See, what just happened is Microsoft slapped Team Kaz and Team Miyamoto right in the forehead. I don't even know where to begin, so I'll copy and paste the best part of the Gamasutra article.

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'.

The details of the new tech are as follows: 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.

And:

The games created with XNA Game Studio Express will not initially be available to regular Xbox 360 users, although there is hope that successful titles made with the package might go on to debut in enhanced form on the universal Xbox Live Arcade service, and a longer-term goal is to create a less restricted distribution market using Xbox Live. In the meantime, a second XNA toolset named Game Studio Professional, originally scheduled tentatively for an early 2006 release, is now due in spring 2007, and is intended to cater more directly to professionals aiming for Windows and XBLA game releases.

The rest is in the link above. Ya know, I should really investigate things little birdies tell me. f13 WILL be on this like a fly on a camel's ass.

So uhm, f13.gaming is open for business. Dead serious. Tomorrow I will be making ANOTHER "fake" user to send PMs to.

Ring-a-ding-ding.

Edit: Maybe, will have to talk to a few "folks" about this sort of thing.

You forgot this part:

Ninja, ninja Edit.

A devkit for $99 is certainly a nice step forward.  I'm curious to see which of the big three console manufacturers first decides to allow indie development *without* severe distribution limitations.   Letting the little guys make their games and sell them online with no hassle would be an interesting thing to see.

Why not let distribution be open? 

Piracy concerns: Perhaps the size of indie games could be somewhat limited to reduce the risk of  people repackaging commercial games.  Combine this with requiring enough identification for payment processing to work and I think you'd limit piracy a bit.

Content concerns:  Does xbox live have content control stuff already?  Perhaps indie titles could be limited to 18+ until they've been through some approval process.  You might have to charge some fee for this to offset the cost of having somebody actually examine the content. 

You can do all kinds of things to provide incentives for developers to go through a bit more process for better placement, to seek wider (hard copy) distribution, etc. 

- Q

You just nailed the problem in the 4th box. But for $99 I can have access to all the indie stuff?

This should have been called "Killer App."

Does this include the ability to mod or is it just for new games? I doubt they would let us mod games but that would be pretty fucking cool.

WoW. This gives the little game developer wannabe in me hope. if I could code something like Marble Ultra Blast and sell it on Live I'd be in heaven. Of course, first I have to do that coding part...

Still, could this be another thing that will blindside Sony? (who I'm becoming more and more convinced is going to lose the console wars this generation.)

Could be cool if they do it right (procedural graphics and 'moddable' basic game templates in each genre like FPS, RTS, etc). I'm not holding my breath.

I could see them making game templates for shooters and such. Hell, GG already has game templates SORT OF for RTSs and such.

I'm going with 'more like NWN and less like Torque'. Afterall, if it was like Torque you could just use Torque.

Heh, only problem is you can't show your game to anyone. you have to transfer it via PC with source code included and procedure is seems complicated than writing the game itself :-o
Last thing I would want to do is release source of my precious game so some jackass can add few comas and steal all the glory. Not to mention that open sourcing game kind of kill all possible ways to profit form it.
You can't even show the bloody game to your friends (unless every and each of them them pay 99$, install, set-up and download bunch of stuff).
If they added some badass peer review and distribution system, then it would be awesome. Right now, they're just selling fancy app without any practical use for enduser. You spend 99$ for a privilige to learn basics of Xbox programming (that's asusming it'll be IDE and not some mutated "make your country song" joke) and when you finally learn it and make that most awesome game you're on M$ mercy. They will have ultimate upper hand in any negotiations and could force on you distribution deal with 0,5% of less from sales.

Been staying away from the boards so I wasn't teased into talking about this...but it's finally public!

Basically, this is a first run...the Express version for XNA Game Studio. Anyone interested in the behind the scenes thought that went into Microsoft's planning should listen to the Gamefest Keynote Speech (http://www.majornelson.com/archive/2006/08/14/Gamefest-Keynote.aspx) -- long (58 mins) and boring in some places, but I think it gives a really solid feeling behind what Microsoft's intentions are here.

Basically what it boils down to is that this version of the framework is not intended to make game developers money in the short term. You cannot sell your games via the Express version, and you cannot (currently) even distribute outside of the Live Arcade interface. the purpose behind this is to get the power and money of Microsoft behind a gaming industry grass roots movment back towards innovation and gameplay instead of sequels and multi-million dollar budgets.

To anyone that knows much about GarageGames, that's been our vision for 6 years now--and Microsoft decided as part of their long term vision that they didn't want to go it alone. Ironically, GarageGames when it started was very much an anti-Microsoft crew (and MS knows it!), and when they came to us with the idea of using managed code to make games, we kind of giggled. Five months later, we bring you Torque X (http://www.garagegames.com/products/torque/x/).

Facts drilled down:

--The XNA Game Studio Express is aimed at hobbyists, and it's a "lite" version, as you'd expect.
----No networking (single player only)
----no financial gain through distribution
----limited XBLA capability

In general, the main idea is to have Schild make a game on his PC, upload it to the Creator's Club, and let Krakrok download it to his PC, build to his XBox360, and play around with it. Kind of like several friends getting together in a garage to jam on some music and see what pops out.

--XNA Game Studio Professional is the next generation of the technology and framework, and is aimed at AAA developers. It will most lilkely (we don't know, they don't even know I'm guessing) be more expensive, and come with a much larger suite of tools and functionality, including networking, full XBLA capability, and distribution for sale.

Note that what Microsoft is doing is providing a framework, i.e. an API and the capability to distribute between PC and console. We (GarageGames) are providing our Torque Game Builder tools to allow you an easier path for making games using this framework.

I'm going with the cynical crowd here.  There are already game development kits available to those who want them, and prices are low enough that there is practically no barrier to a dedicated team or even individual.  The thing that will get this out of the incubator is the XBLA distribution, because that's the biggest unknown (as far as I know) to Joe Shmuckpack when he decided he's really going to make a game this time.  However, if Joe really had an awesome idea and the dedication to get his game built, he'd already have it done.  Maybe with a GG tool, maybe with TADS, but he'd have something.  Now, for people who are currently or looking at peddling their completed game, this would be great.  Eventually.

The part of this that is really important, however, is that Microsoft probably will not have to be incredibly permissive in order to be easier to work with than Nintendo.

This seems like a half-assed version of the http://www.experimentalgameplay.com (http://www.experimentalgameplay.com). You can post your snazzy indie game and have it reviewed by rand0mAssHat13. However it's free and doesn't require you to post all of your source. Plus you can use any engine you want, including Flash. I'm just not seeing what this new XBox Thing has over it.

The root purpose behind this level of Game Studio Express (please note this is my personal opinion, not an official one, although it's supported by the keynote speech at GameFest) is to give people a way to collaborate in whatever method they desire to make a game they can then play on an XBox360 purchased retail, with no dev kit (hardware), or publisher interaction.

Game Studio over XNA in general, is the end result of quite a few years of community research regarding game development. Believe it or not (and remember like I said above, GG was anti-MS for quite a while!), MS has actually done analysis of the future of the gaming industry, and was not pleased--they believe that with the current trends in the industry, we will have substantially less game developers making substantially more expensive and less interesting games over the next 5-10 years. This is one aspect of their way to avoid many of the problems they see.

They looked at the various grass roots movements (again, listen to the keynote), and recognized how the indie film and music industries evolved, and wanted to do whatever they could to help that evolve in the game industry itself. Two critical aspects were "giving indie/hobby game devs a place to work", which in this case turns out to be a virtual workplace provided by Game Studio Express and the XNA capabilities, and giving the tools needed to Game Dev Schools (both the only game dev ones, but even more importantly the actual 4 year universities) so that people will continue to be excited about making games from being a kid. The third critical aspect was partnering with established communites that were already assisting/leading the indie grass roots game developers, hence GG's involvement in the project.

Anecdote: when I was a kid, I was playing games on a Vic-20/Commodore 64. And with some programming, I could make games on the same platform, and that was very very cool. So cool, in fact, that 20 years later when I got a chance to make games for a living, I jumped at it.

 Today, kids are playing games on a console, but can't mess around with console programming. MS wanted to change that.

No, Joe wouldn't have a game made. Because Joe hates PC Gaming.

I appreciate the sentiment of the GSE. I really do. I go to one of those game development schools where people are really excited about making games, and at the end of the day most people there don't have the drive to finish making a game. It takes a metric fuckton of work to finish something. Giving another target platform to the people who have the drive to make a game in the first place is awesome, but they are the same set of people that are willing to sit down and make their vision work on the PC. I just don't see this empowering a new breed of would be game developers.

My cycnical side suspects they did a survey of their customers and asked "If there was a way you could make a game for the 360, would you?" and a bunch of folks wrote "0mg! Yes!!!!" and then did another beer bong and passed out. There are a lot more folks who think it is cool to develop games than people who actually will put out the effort to make the damn thing.

On the flip side, this is an awesome first step towards opening consumers eyes to indie game development. It's also awesome that there _is_ a console people can develop against. I respect MS/GG for putting this out, I'm just not seeing the fields of fresh developers.

This is a theoretical Joe from 1993.  We can call him "Larry".  Larry Lafferpack.

That's the problem, people aren't sitting in garages nowdays. They have internet. I know few people who are writing game for fun (ok, fun learning). Thing is, they all want to share their creation with friends. Without putting all 50 of them into garage or having them buy 100$ dev kit.
Why there is no way to just send the binaries (you could have a limit of how many people you send it to). In the end it's a console, you can't sniff banking details from it or melt cpu (can you?).

If you wanted to be really cynical about this, you could point out how it's yet another closed, managed framework which, if you use it, will make it nigh-impossible to port your game to a non-Microsoft platform, console or otherwise. Why? Because it's all built on .NET 2.0, so until there's a Mono port of this, you're locked in to a single vendor.

Is there even a port of Mono for PS2-Linux?

And before Schild gets all hot and bothered about how irrelevant my above thought is - there's a port of OpenGL for all major PC platforms as well as PS2 and Gamecube, and Sony's announced that it will be supporting OpenGL on PS3. It's much easier to port games (which is a big part of the modern gaming biz - porting shit all over the place) that all use the same API on each platform.

Granted, if you're just tinkering, then portability is probably not a huge concern, but it may become one if you create an indie sleeper hit and then suddenly have to port your XNA XBLA hit over to the Nintendo-net and PS3-verse.

Also, their restrictions on how to swap and sample games is pretty much rubbish. Having to buy a $99 subscription if you want to look at someone else's indie games... bleah.

So, what rights to their own creations to the indie game makers have? This is very not Microsoft if it doesn't come with some catch that allows MS to pocket parts of your profits or use elements of your code/gameplay.

Other than the non-commerical part for Xbox 360 games and the goofy distribution scheme (has to be distributed as source) I don't think Microsoft limits any of your rights. They already allow unrestricted commercial use of their other "Express" tools which can be used to make Windows games so this latest XNA stuff isn't really any different.

Mono doesn't support DirectX.

No.

I'm guessing they want it to somewhat boost 360 sales and gain some foot hold for XNA, both of which requires a large installed user base. Charging $99 for it will surely shut out a very large chunk of their potential users, I don't see many students paying $99 yearly for this for example. Stupid really.

Going to go with the music analogy here, best that I can:

1) "Why should I pay $99/year to share my source code with others?" -- why should you pay hundreds of dollars per instrument to play music together? Also note: the $99/year (Creator's Club) is only required if you want to deploy to the 360. GSE is simply an IDE on top of a framework--you can email all the files you want, any way you want.

2) "Why can't I sell my games with this?" -- When you're jammin in a garage with some friends, you aren't in a recording studio cutting tracks.

3) "The games willl suck/not be worth the subscription fee to download!" -- When you are jamming in a studio with friends, the music sucks pretty bad too. However, sometimes you hit things right, and someone may just be passing by and overhear you and sign a deal.

FYI, the source code only distro is a stopgap measure right now. Trust me--this is bleeding edge technology, and it's just the initial set of features. There is a lot to be done yet to get this working smoothly.

"If you wanted to be really cynical about this, you could point out how it's yet another closed, managed framework...."

Microsoft doesn't expect games to flow directly from GSE to commercial sale. GSE is simply about providing a way for people to collaborate, with the coolness factor of being able to play their game on a console--it's really that simple (at this stage anyway).

I've seen it mentioned on a lot of other forums that people think "Well, the Wii dev kit is gonna be uber cheap--I'll just buy one of those!". Umm, no, you won't. Console developers won't even consider giving a dev kit to a company without proven track record and/or demonstrated high quality game in existence. It doesn't matter if the dev kit cost $0.50--the masses aren't getting them.

Also on that point--while GSE is of course MS only, Torque is not. It's not up and running fully yet, but we are doing our best to simply treat this whole project as just another platform....for example, the plan is that you will be able to create a game with our Torque Game Builder and (with some sort of plugin or additional license of some sort--we don't even know how it will be packaged yet), simply export it to an intermediate format and read it into Torque X---and from there put it on the 360 (with Creator's Club account, or whatever the next iteration of that will be).

I'm not frustrated or anything, but I really think you guys can't see the forest for the trees right now...and as a final thought, something that was demonstrated in the keynote speech but not really recognized by many: there was a cell phone running XNA and integrated with both an XBox360 and a Vista computer as well. "Live Anywhere" means exactly what it sounds like--not cross operating system, but true cross platform.

One more thought: I think everyone (not just f13) is viewing this as a commercial project intended to make money. I can't stress how important it is to realize--it is not. Microsoft is going to lose (in my opinion, no insider information to back it or anything) a metric buttload of money on this, at least in the very short term.

The project isn't intended to shore up revenue on 360, or increase sales of consoles, or anything of that nature. Certainly, it may do so, and of course they had to prove to accounting it at least had a chance of being revenue neutral, but I want to stress again: the XNA team is so passionate about sponsoring indie devs that they travelled down to little old Eugene, OR to convince GG that we should get on board. They walked into a large group of passionate anti-MS'ers (we aren't even allowed to have MS Office on our computers, and just recently went to using Visual Studio) and convinced every last one of us--including Jeff Tunnell who broke away from the establishment 6 years ago due to exactly what MS used to represent--that they were passionate about our beliefs.

This isn't for Microsoft guys--this is for you, and me, and all the little guys. Will it work? Who knows for sure. But they, and we, are trying :)

The problem is there is no forest right now, just a bunch of seeds (the beta isn't even out yet) and not even the promise that there are enough seeds to make a forest. We don't know how much XNA Game Studio Pro and XNA Studio are going to cost. We don't know if there will be restrictions on who can buy the software and who can create signed Xbox games and restrictions on how they can be distributed and how badly the developers are going to get screwed in terms of royalties if they decide to go with Microsoft as the publisher.

Your music analog breaks down because when you buy an instrument there are no restrictions on what you do with the sounds you create with that instrument as long as you aren't infringing on somebody else's copyright. With XNA Game Studio Express you are handcuffed in what you can do on the the Xbox 360 (though there are no restrictions on Windows).

As long as the OS has the word "Windows" in it somewhere (I'm assuming the cell phone was running Windows Mobile).

I actually read the posts and dozed through the speech but I have to say... I don't see this as a bad thing.  While there might be problems and some limitations, so far, it doesn't sound like they're anything insurmountable and will open doors for a lot of people who had no place to go.  I can understand people saying it's not for them, but not for anyone?  Or they shouldn't even try?  That bit I don't get.  This is people cooperating... it's usually a good thing.

You don't need a lot of money to do this.  It might work.  If it doesn't work, I don't see a lot of harm coming from it's failure.  It's also cheap enough for people who just want to fiddle around to have a go.  I do think debating the distribution point is a fair argument, however.  I don't see a reason it shouldn't be open.

Also, I don't know why Stephen Zepp would think anyone would tease him!  We NEVER tease.  We're all smart and serious.  And... and... cute.  Smart, serious and cute... that's us, you little Micro-softie, you.

My basic reaction is still wary. On the one hand, I love the idea that this might be the start of something wonderful - the opening on console platforms to development by amateurs and the general developer populace.

On the other hand, since it's .NET 2.0/Direct3D/DirectX, I fear that this will be similar to the Visual Basic of game programming. Admittedly, with the libraries out there today, few mid-level or entry-level developers will need to directly manipulate individual polys or quirks in DirectInput, but it's still important to learn those things. I also fear further vendor lock-in (at the development level) at a time when, despite a surge in OSX ownership, cross-OS PC game ports remain rare. A development like this certainly will not help the cause of easy portability, and Microsoft knows it.

So I view it as both a baby step and a very mixed blessing.

Quick note: For the XNA demo at GameFest, GG ported the entire build of Marble Blast Ultra from the c++ Torque Shader Engine version, to the Torque X C# version. In addition, we added in polysoup collision instead of the BSP based collision that was used in MBU on 360.

The functionality was better, and the performance, while slightly slower in real terms, was completely the same from the player's perspective.

Also, regarding OSX  I think that there is a really good read on Jeff Tunnell's blog (http://www.makeitbigingames.com/) regarding game development on OSX.

The cost of the devkit is not at all scary.

Being locked in to xbox and having no distribution channel besides "well *maybe* someone will be impressed and *maybe* something could come of that" is not very interesting to me. 

Expecting indie developers to put all their energy into building something with no distribution options is asking a bit much.  At least with a PC game, I could sell it via a number of online channels, go the shareware route, etc.

As the little guy, you really want to minimize risk if say you're going to live on a shoestring and try to build something cool and get it out there.  Knowing that there's at least some way to sell what you make helps a bit.

- Q

I don't think you understand my point--indies cannot ever get dev kits. Not for XBox360, not for any existing, or future console. Period. Won't happen (without a publiser agreement). AAA studios cannot get dev kits, nor can they get slots awarded from Microsoft for development currently, because they aren't available, and won't be.

And I've said it a couple of times now, but this is the very early stages. The technology will evolve, and change as things move along. Microsoft has already said that they will be adding in distributed binary functionality in the future.

I appreciate that devkits are out of the reach of the small shop.  All I'm saying is that *just* a cheap devkit is not sufficient enticement for many people.  A *free* devkit for someone has limited usefulness if you still don't have a way of actually shipping on that platform that you can count on.

I think it's *awesome* that for $99 someone can get tools to develop software for xbox.  That is indeed a huge step forward. 

I know that if I were going to be pouring my heart and soul into a gamesdev project either after work or quitting my day job  to pursue a dream of gamesdev, I would still think twice about doing it with tools that are locked in to a platform with a significant barrier to entry. 

One of the reasons I write embedded systems and operating systems software for a living is that I can work on projects that can ship.  One of the things I learned about shipping closed systems with free development kits but huge hurdles to getting your software deployed (http://developer.danger.com/) is that the vast majority of developers are not interested in dedicating the time needed to build a solid, polished app if the story is "build it all first and then see if the carrier might accept it".

Obviously a major console platform will convince more people to take a leap writing that app, hoping to break into games somehow by showing their chops on a real console.  I'm simply saying that without a clear path to actual distribution, many will choose to pursue projects in other spaces.

Can these managed C# projects be built for and shipped on regular PCs?  If that's the case it's less scary --  My code is not locked into a platform where I have no idea if it might ever see the light of day.

-Q

Yes there are no restrictions on how XNA Game Studio Express can be used under Windows XP.

Oh, excellent.  That's not nearly as bad as it first sounded.  I still want to see real open distribution to the consoles, but avoiding the roach motel model here is a good first step while they sort out the rest.

Of course I *really* hope this starts some kind of crazy arms race between the three big console players to see who can embrace indie games the best and fastest, resulting in some huge wins for the little guys.  I personally have more interest in hacking on ps3 or wii code than xbox, but I suspect msft is going to have a far better tools story (assuming the other two do launch competing devkits).

- Q

As Trippy said, Game Studio Express can build on PC's with no issue, and you can distribute whatever you like in any way you like (as long as you own ip, etc., etc.--usual caveats).

The initial/trial Creator's Club that they feel will be first has some constraints that are a matter of technical detail more than intended workflow--trust me, I'm pretty sure they want a way in the long run for people to be able to go straight from dev to retail on 360 (XBLive/LiveAnywhere I'm talking about here, not disc based or anything) that is as automated as possible and sure insure quality end content.

Video from GameFest Keynote speech:

Summary page--multiple links (http://www.xbox.com/en-US/community/news/2006/0815-gamefest.htm)

Highlights (10 mins) (http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/viewer.aspx?productId=1513&assetTypeId=2&shotId=3)

Entire speech (58 mins) (http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/viewer.aspx?productId=1513&assetTypeId=2&shotId=4)

If you are curious about GG's involvement, the first link about 2/3 of the way through shows Marble Blast Ultra completely ported to C# over XNA (no c++ at all).

The second link (also about 2/3 of the way through) shows off a quick demo of TGB, Torque X, as well as the MBU demo.

So I distribute all my source code and production assets for free to everyone, cannot sell my creation and have a crippleware environment that doesn't support features that have been standard for decades.

Sounds like a winner.

What a joke. You want to make something that will encourage indies? Just give away a 360 compiler and other basic tools along with basic library documentation. The networking APIs are there but I can't use them because I'm stuck with some weak "lite" dev environment?

I don't think most indie devs want to be treated like small children.

Not sure how many times it needs to be said before it sinks in....this stage is not intended for people to make money. It's not a commercial distribution path.

This stage is setting up a community, by giving those interested the ability to share their code across the network and deploy it to a 360, without a dev kit. It's intended to help foster the good old days of being able to collaborate with a community for developing games, but this time on a console instead of a pc.

Something that no other console in the world allows you to do, period, and it's dirt cheap ($12 a month--most people pay more than that for a MMO subscription if they play one).

It's also the first iteration of bleeding edge technology. As it evolves, and the community built around it demonstrates need and desire for various functionality, it will be implemented.

You mean the good old days of shareware and such? I don't remember any "good old days" where devs gave away everything for free, including all source and art assets, were restricted in what they could do and could not distribute anything.


The GBA allows you do that that, but better since you aren't restricted by a lame environment.

As far as "bleeding edge technology" goes - crippleware tools are bleeding edge?

The whole approach is silly. Just open up the entire API. Functionality will be implemented as needed? The functionality is already all there. It just isn't being exposed.

On a PC or GBA I can use the exact same functionality that any other dev can use. In this environment the full APIs are being hidden away for what reason exactly? Devs have to beg and whine to use networking APIs then wait for MS to implement them when they are just sitting right there?

Again, don't treat people like babies. Give them a proper compiler and docs and let them burn their own discs. This is just a fancy toy and an insult.

If MS had a true interest in the indie scene they would expose full APIs to use the same way real devs use them.

Whatever dude.

I think you are missing the point on the technical side of things. Managed code on the Xbox 360 is a new thing -- it's so new in fact the gaming APIs haven't been finalized yet. So why port .NET over to the Xbox 360? That's a good question. At E3 Microsoft made some noise about how they've been neglecting game development on Windows and how they are going to make Windows and Xbox 360 cross-platform development easier and apparently beefing up support for DirectX in .NET and porting .NET to the Xbox 360 is their answer to that.

Yes it would be nice if Microsoft (and Nintendo and Sony) made their dev kits available to anybody. Unfortunately that's not going to happen. Will XNA Game Studio be a solution for indie developers? It's hard to say without knowing more about the versions that will be released next year and what licensing and distribution restrictions they might impose. Right now XNA Game Studio Express certainly is not a solution (given the non-commerical restriction) even if it did support binary distribution.

Entire dev kits have a lot of things, including debuggers etc. All I'm saying is ship out a compiler and let people burn their own discs.

The reason PCs had a "good old days" of indie development was that indies can do everything big studios can do. The studios don't have any super-secret extra technology. I can use all the same methods, APIs, libraries and techniques. If I'm a really good programmer I can do what a major studio can do.

The problem is on consoles you can't do that, and this XNA stuff doesn't address this. Real developers get to develop in C and I get to develop in C# against a smaller set of libraries? Right out the door you are making indie devs second-class citizens.

How hard is it to just give out a compiler and some basic docs?

As an indie dev how does managed code help me exactly? It doesn't. It serves some crappy MS agenda, not my agenda. I don't need all the same tools major studios get - all I want is the same potential, although my path may be a lot longer and harder. In theory if I work super hard and am super smart I want to be able to make a real game.

With XNA my game can't do as much and is slower. It's like telling people you are going to let them develop PC games then handing them Java with an incomplete set of libraries and that is all they can use. EXACTLY like that really.

It's a toy development system. A real development system starts with a C compiler compiling against the standard APIs.

I'm just wondering, I mean there's been a lot of big talk in this thread. A lot of crazy big talk. But uh, how many people are going to need that "AAA" potential. Indie devs don't go for that. The vast majority will do casual gaming and experimental gaming stuff and this is an opportunity to port straight to a modern console and exchange the code with other people in the program. Maybe once in a blue moon something deep and innovative will come out of it, but I see it as a step in the right direction.

Why is it being labeled as crippleware if there's nothing to compare it to (other than $50,000 dev kits)?

Having AAA potential is not the same as actually creating a AAA game. No, most likely nobody is going to create a AAA title even if you give out real 360 dev kits for free. My problem with this is you aren't creating real 360 games and you don't even have a chance to try to make a AAA title.

It's like putting Java on the 360 and having people write Java games. It's not even 360 programming really. It's programming for an environment that runs on the 360, but is not the actual 360 environment. I mean no networking? It's not like networking is some fringe feature.

I call it crippleware because it cripples what you can do on the 360. It provides you a very limited environment instead of letting you access the full spectrum of functionality.

My suspicion is that this won't appeal to many people, because they have my mindset. It's almost insulting. I'm supposed to be all excited because I can get some crap running on a 360 in some weak .NET environment?

I could do that, or I could get an ARM/THUMB compiler and write a homebrew GBA game that can do everything and anything a real GBA game could do.

Again, I'm not asking for a whole dev kit. Just a compiler and some way to run your stuff an the 360 be it burned discs or whatever. This thing seems like it's aimed for amateurs and kids. Indies and amateurs are not the same thing.

Late to the party, and I should post there, but can't be arsed. Unsurprisingly, for somebody who had to make Mac games in the past, he speaks from bitter experience. Mac on Intel pretty much changes everything, at least if you want it to. Despite the portents of doom that he alludes to with respect to Boot Camp, I don't buy it. The people who will buy (or indeed steal) a copy of Windows XP/Vista, partition their disk and reboot their computer into Windows in order to play games already had PCs that they were gaming on. For them, Boot Camp is a useful workaround, not a solution.

The other day I got a support call while I was playing :nda: on my MacBook Pro under Windows. It was awkward. No such problems when I'm playing WoW under OS X, and I have all my other tools around. Duplicating them all over on the Windows partition just isn't an option, not least because laptops don't have huge hard drives. So, I'll still buy Mac games if they're fun to play. Now that we're on Intel boxes, porting should be trivial and cost-effective, particularly with Windows-derived APIs like Cider. Its certainly the case that Intel is good for Mac market growth - it wasn't until Apple started shipping Intel computers that their Mac sales outperformed their iPod sales, and a good proportion of them went to first time Mac users.

As for the hysterics elsewhere in this thread regarding XNA and Torque, I don't get it. These are good tools, but they're just an option. If they don't fit your need, use something else. Don't condemn them just because they aren't what you wanted or needed.

Couple of things from both this post and others:

Game Studio Express : managed, C# code--intended for indies

Game Studio Professional : managed, C# code--intended for professionals.

NOTE: Neither of the Game Studio versions as far as I am aware are going to allow native code of any type, not assembler, not c++, not nothing.

The only features currently that are "crippled" are due to one of a few issues:

1) Tech development. For example, distribution of binaries isn't implemented yet across the framework. In addition, the networking issues aren't resolved yet. I think that Margalis may have heard some rumors about what dev kits for 360 let you do, but they allow two things only (that I am aware of):

--can network outside of the protected/encrypted 360 proprietary network, since dev kits let you turn off the encryption. This means that it is currently the only way to attach to a PC.
--can run unsigned code by building with Visual Studio and delpoying the package to the dev kit.

FYI, 360 dev kits don't have a debugger--they simply allow a remote debugging session to the 360 from Visual Studio via a network connection.

2) 360 Brand protection/platform security. MS is never ever ever going to allow unsigned code on their retail 360's that isn't managed. Won't happen. That's why all XBLA/CD-Rom pressed games require a 5 digit budget for certification, as well as an approval from MS for a distribution slot.

Oh, and by the way: if you want fully capable c++ development for XBox360, go by a TSE-360 license from us. C++, everything unique to the 360 dev environment abstracted for you, and a full copy of Marble Blast Ultra source code sans the marble implementation (physics, rendering, control, etc).

Just be prepared to bring your checkbook, as the license is just the start--you'll need a dev kit as well as a distro/dev slot from MS. The positive side is you can fully develop your game within the TSE 360 sdk on PC, and once you get your dev kit and slot, you can can select the Xenon project and recomplile and deploy.

Final comment on the managed side of things: Quite frankly, we thought the same thing. When MS first approached us, we honestly brushed it off--we didn't think that managed code game development was even possible for any sort of interesting game.

After taking 3 weeks to port MBU from native C++ to a fully re-implemented managed Torque engine (which was several man-months, but not as much as you'd think to develop itself), adding in features to the core engine that didn't even exist in our C++ versions due to performance problems (polysoup collision and rendering for one), and not being able to see a difference in play performance, we decided it wasn't only possible, but it was a damned good idea.

No ability to create hard media doesn't worry me a bunch.  Console manufacturers are always going to want tight control over the distribution channels to ensure they make the piles of money they want (or perhaps need -- to offset development costs) to make.  Let me distribute or sell my content via some online mechanism and I'm pretty happy. 

Managed code seems a bit silly to me in the modern world of MMUs and operating systems that run at a higher ring than user code, at least as far as solving the "don't subvert the system" problem.  Honestly you *should* be able to solve that without needing managed runtime environments, since you have hardware to do it for you.  It's not like the xbox360 is ARM7 based like gba -- it can effectively protect itself from the apps that it runs. 

That said, there are some really nice things about environments that are "safer" than C/C++ from a development and debugging standpoint.  If you can get the needed performance, hell, it can be a win.

-Q

The managed code is for ease of porting between XP (the development environment) and the 360.

And other platforms...(not OS's, platforms)

Keep in mind that MS in the keynote brought up cell phones, and they are calling it "Live Anywhere", not "PC to 360 Live"...

Porting a 360 game to a cell phone...uh huh.

heh. the more you post, the more I think you didn't watch any of the keynote ;)

I didn't. Why would I?

Cross compatibility between 360 and cell-phone development is a non-feature if there ever was one.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. You could certainly make a 2D XBLA game that's similar to, if not identical to, a cellphone game.

How well it would do is another matter entirely, unless you make the next Tetris.

The nitpick, of course, being that most phones are SymbianOS, not WinCE or whatever the hell Microsoft puts on phones.

Programming for small form-factor devices is very different. The lack of screen real-estate will force a redesign in any but the simplest of games. Maybe Snake, Joust and Tetris might work on a big and small screen but that is about it.

My final word on this subject is that this stuff seems like a cool toy for hobbyists, rather than a tool for indie devs or techies. It is the kind of thing that might appeal greatly to the people over at gamedev.net, and probably not to the people who do things like homebrew GBA games or homebrew Linux/MAME on XBox.

I understand the technology, the hardware and the libraries. Just let me use them. You don't have to help me, but don't get in the way either. That's why PC shareware and modding and such is popular and vibrant - nobody gets in your way. If you can think of it you can program it, given the appropriate skill.

Beta Release tonight/tomorrow (http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=882&SiteID=1). I'm stoked. Now I just need to get signed up and shit.

Keep in mind that this is just a beta release of the framework, and that they will be adding a lot of functionality over the next several months, aiming for the first 1.0 release during the holiday season.

Also, if you were wondering, TorqueX is still under development, and is aimed at an initial release roughly the same time as XNA moves out of beta--possibly a bit sooner. For now, you can use Torque Game Builder for your scene construction, and at a minimum be able to export your scenes to an intermediate file and import them to TorqueX (and therefore, XNA).

Download here (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=21e979e3-b8ae-4ea6-8e65-393ea7684d6c&displaylang=en). Requires Visual C# 2005 Express Edition (http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/visualcsharp/download/) be installed first.

Forums are full of newbs. I might check this out in a few months after some kinks are worked out.

If you have any specific questions/issues, might want to send them my way (or even ask if we can do it here) and I'll see what I can find out for you. We've probably got the most combined experience with it (other than MS itself) since we've been working with various partnership releases for several months.

XNA Game Studio Express officially released (http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/dec06/12-11XNAGSECreatorsPR.mspx)

You still need to ship source code around to share games with friends (who also have to sign up for XNA Creators Club) on Xbox 360.

This was what I was thinking, too. Like The Movies. "Hey everybody! You can make your own games here! Hey, that one's not bad - oh, whoops, it's OUR property now. We own your ideas and time. And you paid us for it! Too bad for you!!"

This is a myth that keeps being spread even though Microsoft has said many times that the author of the game has and keeps full rights to their product.

XNA/GSE is not a commercial distribution mechanism. It is a method for hobbiests to collaborate on "fun stuff"--hobbies.

Now the good news: GarageGames also announced that the Torque X (http://www.garagegames.com/mg/snapshot/view.php?qid=1355) binary is completely free, and we have released a version of the Torque Game Builder that publishes TGB scenes directly to our Torque X binary--all you have to do is to write your scripting in C# (Torque X does not in any way use TorqueScript).

You can take the GSE (XNA C# IDE plus libs) which is free, combined with the Torque X binary, which is free, the free 30 day Demo of our Torque Game Builder X,  and a membership in the Creator's Club ($99 for an entire year), and be playing a game you made on your PC directly on your retail XBox360 in minutes.

Enjoy!

Why not add in distribution and make it 100x more attractive?

Yea, the PC to 360 thing is a pain in the ass.

You're going to make me hit delete twice.. aren't you.

Has anyone been using this thing yet?

How easy is it to set up the dev environment?  Can I get a "Hello World" up and exported to my 360 painlessly?

There are quite a few (I don't have exact numbers off the top of my head) people participating in the GarageGames TorqueX forums (http://www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.area.php?qa=53). Quick glance shows 111 "Getting Started" threads.

Realize that while the TorqueX binary is free, and the Torque Game Builder XNA edition has a 30 day free trial, to deploy to your retail 360 you will need to purchase a Microsoft "Creator's Club" account. All the rest of XNA Game Studio Express is free as far as I am aware.

/necrobump AND /crosspost (do I get extra points for that?)

Looks like MS has smoothed out at least an initial plan for a pipeline from XNA to retail XBLA distribution....hate to be an indie that laughed at the whole XNA initiative and ignored it early on because they thought MS was just being greedy...

Link?

The first prize for their "Dream, Build, Play" game competition (http://www.dreambuildplay.com/main/Prizes.aspx) is an XBLA production slot:

1 First Prize
The developer with the most outstanding game wins:

An invitation to enter into an Xbox Live™ Arcade Publishing Contract
on terms and conditions applicable to such offer
$10,000 USD
Alienware Aurora® 7500 desktop system with AMD Athlon™
64 FX-62 Dual Core Processor, courtesy of Alienware PC and AMD
Retail copy of Windows Vista Ultimate* operating system
Autographed Xbox 360 Premium SKU retail console**
2-year subscription to the XNA Creators Club†
25 four-month subscription tokens to the XNA Creators Club, to
share your masterpiece with friends and family
Choice of Softimage®|XSI® Advanced 6.0, Autodesk® 3ds Max® 9,
or Autodesk® Maya® Complete 8.5



Value of prize: $19,992 USD (No ARV is presently assigned to Publishing Contract pending future mutual agreement by Sponsor and 1st prize winner)

2 Second Prizes
Two talented contestants each win:

$5,000 USD
Alienware Aurora 7500 desktop system with AMD Athlon™ 64 FX-62 Dual Core Processor, courtesy of Alienware PC and AMD
Retail copy of Windows Vista Ultimate operating system
Autographed Xbox 360 Premium SKU retail console*
2-year subscription to the XNA Creators Club
25 four-month subscription tokens to the XNA Creators Club, to share your masterpiece with friends and family
Choice of Softimage®|XSI® Essentials 6.0, Autodesk® 3ds Max® 9,
or Autodesk® Maya® Complete 8.5



Value of each prize: $11,492 USD

17 Third Prizes
If you’re one of these ten skilled developers, you’ll score:
Retail copy of Windows Vista Ultimate operating system
Autographed Xbox 360 retail console
1-year subscription to the XNA Creators Club
10 four-month subscription tokens to the XNA Creators Club, to share your masterpiece with friends and family
Choice of Softimage®|XSI® Foundation 6.0, Autodesk® 3ds Max® 9,
or Autodesk® Maya® Complete 8.5



Value of each prize: $4,394 USD

Note that you can use Torque X, but you must use XNA and GSE.

I have to admit, I'm amazed at the lack of response/excitement here...I'm not even allowed to be in the competition (partner employee), and I'm damned excited about it!

That's over $110,000 in prizes, for an investment of about $8 a month, the rest free, and then of course some blood and sweat--and the XBLA deal for the winner puts you on a pretty nice gravy train for an indie game developer...

I'm just a gamer. Maybe a "literate" (?) one, but developer contests are off limits to me. There's not much to get excited about.


This is kind of like how only a few of us post in the Guitar Thread, even though the rest of the site loves music in their own way.

I think you would be very very amazed at how easy it is to pick up XNA, and Torque X.

"Pure Artists" (meaning those that don't have a lick of logical thought in their brains, but can do wicked cool things with pixels that I'd never even dream of producing) are kicking out some amazing stuff with some pretty low cost tools, and XNA/C# are even easier than just about anything else on the market...

This contest isn't for commercial game developers--it's for indies, and "newbies"--it's for those that are willing to spend some time struggling with new ideas and ways of doing things to reach their dream.

If what you say is true, then it'd be great. Here's a little bit of my history though: I know crap about programming. Like zilch. I was never one of those kids who even did anything with BASIC when he was 10 years old. It's not in my blood, so to speak. And because of that, I'm not an aspiring game developer. I may be passionate about gaming, but so far, it's only as a player. I'm just a critic ;).

Technically, I know more than the average person about computers, but it's more in the "Printer Repair Guy" sense.

As for other skills: I do know a little bit of scripting and markup. Just the usual. HTML, a little JS, some experience with Lingo.

I'm not much of a visual artist, but I'm not bad either. Enough to aid in illustration work and basic animations (which is part of my job actually).

I have very little patience with 3D modeling (and in terms of general art, little patience with sculpting as well).


With these skills, I'd be surprised if I could create anything resembling a game. I'm more creative in music, sound, and umm...theatrical things. Maybe a little storywriting. If I were to be involved in gaming, it'd be along those lines (sound design, scores, voicework, etc.).

When the current internal build (which includes tutorials) is pushed to open beta, I'm going to pm you directly Stray--I'd -really- like to see what you think, and if it is something you think you can handle--mostly due to the exact skills you listed. The "bit of scripting experience" especially actually puts you right into the realm of having at least the background to understand C#, and the rest of it is game engine theory, which you don't need to understand, you just need to learn how to use.

For the rest of you out there (yes, I'm talking to you Margalis) that may have dabbled in making games in the past, I just can't see how you don't at least give it a shot...the scoring criteria for who wins is 40/40/20, which the first 40 percent of your score being "innovation".

With all the discussion here about game innovation, it's time to put your money (or time in this case) where your mouth is!

ONE person wins the right to distribute their game publically. ONE. I can work my ass off for 6 months or more, come in second place, and win a new computer that I don't need - yay! In addition I don't even know what the contract terms are until after I've won.

Most indie devs are used to working on the PC where you can distribute anything you want at any time if you have a website.

It sounds like something for kids, not serious developers. You should know that - you work at a place that *does* let people distribute whatever they want. Imagine if GG didn't let you publish anything but once a year they had a contest where ONE person could publish something. That would be a joke.

If you treat people like small children they aren't going to get excited. You know what would excite people? Create an indie games channel on XBLA. The second that happens I will be the first to say "awesome job", really.

It is patronizing.

"Aren't you kids so happy? We're throwing you a bone! One of you dopes might just be lucky enough to actually sit at the table with the adults!"
---

God why would I spend a ton of time trying to make something awesome for XBLA only to find out I got beat by a Tetris clone and now I've completely wasted my time and can't do ANYTHING with the thing I produced?

I know I speak for a lot of people who would otherwise be interested. You can ignore my opinion but the fact is this is exactly why you don't see much excitement.

Again, the second this becomes "you can submit your games for review and a number of them will go on XBLA" I will be the first to congratulate you on an awesome job. And I would probably sign up myself. I would probably quit my job so I could work on something full time. That would fucking rule, and I swear I would not find some reason to further be an asshole about this.

As it stands now, I get paid good money for the job I have and I have other things to do with my time. The cost-benefit isn't there for me. I'm not a starry-eyed 14 year old dreamer. That doesn't mean I don't have passion but it just doesn't make sense to sink in the time required.

The tools and everything else are there to some degree. (Good enough anyway) The distribution model is not.

It's been said many times that the current model is the beginning.

Do you really think that MS does not want to take games directly from XNA to XBLA if they are worthy? Their best commercial interest is flat out making the transition from XNA to XBLA as smooth as humanly possible...and the very fact that the first prize includes the XBLA offer implies that they are working on it currently, and simply don't have it smooth enough yet to announce it.

BTW, you are missing one very salient point--you can use XNA right now to commercially distribute and sell your games on Windows platforms. The only thing missing is being able to commercially distribute for XBox, and for that, see my paragraph above.

Finally, the contest is open to either platform of choice--you do not have to deploy to a 360 to win the contest. You can take whatever you win, and turn right around and sell your project commercially for Windows, and laugh at the distribution on 360 if you like.

I'm really surprised Margalis...honestly. You are making a game, as a hobby (you've not announced any plans at all to sell what you're making, although I can only assume that has changed due to your position in your post), while still having a primary job...how would doing it in XNA be any different at all?

Let me iterate: you can always sell your XNA game on Windows, no strings attached. If you submit for the contest, you can also win quite a bit (if you make $5k or $10k on your first game without any type of distribution deal, let me know--please!) simply by using XNA and submitting the game, in addition to whatever revenue you generate on your own.

I agree with Margalis to some extent. However, I just as a lot of other people who wants to come from the outside into the industry actually wants to do the things that torque offers themselves. Sure it's time consuming and the success rate is slim, but actually rolling your own little engine teaches a lot and has its advantages.

I was on the XNA seminar on NGC and while it was pretty cool how fast you could see results, it was pretty much laughed at by the serious developers, it was quickly labeled as pretty neat but only good for mock ups. So, if I as a programmer wants to play with the big boys, why would I learn XNA and put my effort on it? It's like expecting people to take you seriously in the web dev area when you slap "I know front page inside and out!" on your resume.

Fair enoug Stephen, I did ignore the windows aspect of XNA. My concern with distribution is not money, it's putting stuff in front of people. Not to hit the pay dirt but just to get stuff to the general public.

You can ignore me to some degree, I've been kind of touchy lately. (Which is saying a lot, I know!  :-P)


This actually became not true about five minutes after I posted it!

I sort of had this weird revalation as I typed "I would quit my job" which was "why the hell haven't I quit my job already?" I couldn't think of a good reason. :lol: (This all sounds rather sudden but it isn't, I didn't just have a moment of insanity)

So maybe I'll look into XNA more given the extra free time I'll have coming up shortly.

It's hard to walk away from the job I have (decent hours, freedom, good salary) but fuck it you don't live forever and there has got to be something more interesting in this world than business software!

Targeting Margalis is one thing, but I think it's strange to target me with this stuff. I'm almost 100% sure that it'd be a complete waste of money and time across the board if I bought anything development related.

I think what Stephan is trying to find out is if the tools are usable by somebody like yourself.

You might also learn something.

I have experience with Torque and a non-programmer can do stuff like make particle effects, create maps and define behaviors pretty easily. If this is easier than Torque you could probably mess around with it nicely.

Just a note: that is going to change, 100% certain. MS convinced a shop of die hard anti-MS folks, die hard c++ folks that Managed code was worth the performance loss--and that's a shop that not only makes games, but makes engines.

The current model of "spend XX millions of dollars and hope your game turns out fun...sell it even if it doesn't and try again" is failing--it's lead to exactly what we all hate about the industry (you guys, the game purchasers, us, the game developers). Indies are quickly proving that long tail revenue from multiple games generating revenue at the same time are the way to go for a very large success rate combined with freedom from the current model, and the commercial studios that are bothering to pay attention are realizing it as well.

The "serious developers" that are laughing at XNA are going to be the ones that are crying--and they've been represented in the past by those that said "anything not written in assembly is worthless", "anything not written in ANSI C is worthless", etc, etc.

Let me just come out with it...

I'm not rejecting learning things so much as I don't really care to learn them to begin with. I was trying to say that before in a nicer way (by giving a little of my history and interests), but that's it in a nutshell. It may be hard to believe around here, but game development just isn't something I want to devote myself to, and never has been. I'm not here at this site to give anyone that impression. I'm just a gamer and a critic -- and I'm pretty content with that. At best, I have only broad ideas on how to improve games (i.e. bullshit).

Wow. Microsoft is the only major console maker that's even making an attempt to allow indie game developers a way to distribute games on a major console platform and all you can do it shit all over them for not promising all the people who submitted entries a guaranteed publishing contract?

First of all Microsoft would be stupid to offer guaranteed publishing contracts to more than the first place winner since this is the first time they've tried this and have no idea what quality of games are going to be made. Heck the first place winner may end up sucking too but at least publishing only one sucky game limits the costs to MS. On the other hand, there's no reason why MS wouldn't offer publishing deals with more than just top finisher if there are other games that are really good. I think of it like American Idol, which presumably most of you don't watch.

On American Idol only the top finisher is guaranteed a recording contract. However historically every second place finisher has been offered a contract as well, and some of the second place finishers have actually sold more records than the winner of that season. Other finalists have been offered recording contracts as well with Chris Daughtry being a recent notable example having the fastest selling rock album in Soundscan history (of course there are many that believe he should've won). And of course Jennifer Hudson just won an Oscar for her performance in Dreamgirls even though she was voted off in seventh place on AI. In other words if you have talent getting exposure on a show like AI opens up all sorts of opportunities for you.

I view contests like this one and "Make Something Unreal" along the same lines as AI (though obviously the immediate rewards for winning AI is far larger). It's a way for budding game developers to get their game design ideas seen by industry people and the gaming public. There's no guarantee that doing well will lead to fortune and glory but it can open up opportunities and lead to better things in the future. You are correct that this contest is not really for "serious" developers since there's a very short 4 month development window for making something for this contest, and they even make that clear in the judging criteria with "polish" being the lowest category at 20%, but like I said above it is a great "career-building" opportunity.

I've been critical of XNA on the 360 in this thread as well but I applaud MS for attempting something no other major console maker has tried before as I said at the top and I think this contest is a good way to for them to gauge interest in the idea and it gives budding game developers a good opportunity to have their game ideas looked at by a major game publisher.

Sorry, but I'm not excited because I'm not a dev, and really have no desire to be one. I could perhaps come up with some interesting ideas, but without any way to implement them. I hate programming, and I'm about as artistic as a rock. I took 2 years of programming in high school. I gave up before I got to C++, so I'll leave this stuff to the people with the actual talent and desire.

I think where this is missing that target, is that I could make games and show them to my friends who had zero interest or ability to make games of their own. This seems aimed more at catering to collaborative development, whereas almost all the hobby development I had ever even heard of back then was independent: shared with an audience, rather than co-developers.

Now I'd want to be able to make a game my friends could play on their consoles ('cause if they have PCs, just making a PC game would make more sense).

That said, my son joined a game development group at his high school: gang of kids filling the roles of designers, programmers and artists, to make their own game. This would be great for them.

For a platform aimed at collaborative development, a contest aimed at individuals (based on the prizes) seems like a mis-match.

A school vs. school contest would be pretty sweet, especially benefiting MS with prizes aimed at ensuring the computer game dev club becomes entrenched.

Otherwise, this seems like more the sort of thing to showcase a hobby-dev community's stuff than to build said community. Probably more exciting to a website populated by that community than to... whatever f13 is... Folks rode hard and put away wet by PC MMORPGs?

Don't get me wrong, though, This is real nice, too.

I have to admit, I agree totally with this. The prizes definitely seem aimed at the "single person shop", which is a shame.


That is such a freaking outstanding idea that I'm going to present it directly to the Microsoft Educational Advisory Board (hell, I don't know if that's even their name, but I am going to find out!) as soon as possible. Seriously...no sarcasm there at all.

Yes it is. You can compare it with the Make Something Unreal contests which just have cash prizes (plus an Unreal Engine license to the winner) which makes it easier to split the winnings among a team. MS likes to give "stuff" away, though, since it costs them a lot less than the "retail" value of the prizes.

Well, the top 3 prizes all include cash portions as well--$10k for top prize, and $5k for second, but yes, the other portions are hard to "split up" I agree.

Dundee brought the logic.

It's just a problem of message mismatched with audience.

Dundee is right, the appeal to me of XNA is that I can make something, show it to my friends, and then maybe let the general public play it. Sharing only with other XNA devs is strange. And the appeal is very much the XBox - having your thing on a console is way cooler than having it on a PC and we can already make PC games.

I don't expect a contest with 10 contracts for an XBLA game. I don't expect any contracts. What I would ask for, ideally, is that your game can go through an approval process and end up on a special channel. Now the approval process might be easier because the "indie channel" would be nicknamed the "dreck channel" at first, but the idea is that everyone has something to work towards.

I do think this would be a really exciting thing for kids and teens. (And said as much in my sarcastic asshole way) Kids love working together on stuff like this together - I know I did.

That's F-R-E-E-M-A-N.

Agreed, both statements.

I asked before if you can port XNA stuff over to the console and check it out.  Pretty sure the answer was no.  Killed whatever interest I had in the project right there.  Let me know when I can create a package, transfer it to the 360 (LAN preferably but a DVD is fine too) and run it without buying a $50,000 license and I will take another look.

If I actually were to make something marketable the $10k prize in this contest is laughable and if I can't make something marketable then the $10k prize is out of my reach anyway.  One of the major points of digital distribution is the lack of having to pay off multiple middle-men to get your product out there.  This contest is basically saying invest your hard effort for a minor prize and let us take the cream of your earnings and maybe we will help you digitally distribute your creation.

eh?  Whatever.

Yes you can. You have to cough up $49 for a four-month subscription or $99 for a year subscription to XNA Creators Club to run XNA games you create or copy from other XNA Creator Club members on your Xbox 360.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/xna/bb219592.aspx

I certainly agree that 3rd party engines is the way to go for a dev house intrested in making quality games. However, XNA has totally failed to market to that segment and have so far decided to cater to the newbie squad and push simplicity rather than technical power. Managed C++ is cool, and especially .NET. The performance hit isn't that large, and the memory footprint is somewhat getting migrated by growing system memory. However, the step to XNA is a diffrent thing entirely. What microsoft needs to do in order to get some market penetration going is producing something that technically impressive. This holds true for torque to some extent as well, I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but what you guys really would need in order to get people intrested is a decent AAA release. I mean, there's a reason for why people are raving about the latest unreal engine or the latest id engine.

I remember what happened now.  Zepp started talking about subscriptions to the tools and I blanked out.  As a hobbyist I haven't decided if I care for that idea or not.  If I was convinced I was going to make something professional then I would probably go for it (except, of course, you can't make anything for commercial use on XBOX 360).  All I am really interested in at this point is making a ball bounce on my TV screen with the words "Hello World" on it and I gotta pony up 40 bucks?  And then in three months they take it away from me until I open the wallet again.

Stupid thing is that I actually have a good bit of C# experience and also experience making 3-D models and such and if I could dork around with no pressure I certainly would.  As it stands now I don't care for the implementation as I don't have a lot of free time and the subscriptions would sit idle the vast majority of the time.

So just do it for Windows XP initially and if you actually complete enough of something that you want to see run on your Xbox 360 then you subscribe.

Edit: your not yoru

I'm still blown away by that attitude I guess.

Do you have any other hobbies that coss less than approx $9 a month?

MS is taking the long view with XNA, as they rightly should. They are focusing on the kids when they are young, in the educational and hobbiest spaces, to bring back the passion of making games that so many of us had when we were kids, because they are focusing on post 2010, not next quarter.

GarageGames for that matter is as well--there are more than 140 schools teaching Torque right now, and it's continuing to go up. A very quick anecdotal story:

Davey Jackson went to a Microsoft sponsored academic conference last wekk, and during the EA presentation, one of the topics on EA's sliides was "what we look for in new developers". The answer was "experience in a game engine like Torque or Renderware".

Exactly.

+ XBOX 360, + windows XP Pro, + Computer, +internet, + etc...  So, it's like, a really expensive hobby, thousands of dollars a year.  I play piano a bit.  I bought a cheap electric piano years and years ago.  Probably costs me less than 9 bucks a month to play it and the longer I play it the cheaper it gets.

I don't care if there is a cost to entry, I can decide to pay that or not if I feel the value is there.  I do care for cost of continuing use of stuff I made though.  Your 9 bucks a month is actually $500 for 5 years.  No, wait, it's $1000 dollars for 10 years.  Second I stop paying it (and being held hostage anytime MS decides to raise the fees) I can no longer putz around?  Frankly, I would rather have paid $250 up front and been done with it.

Trippy:

I can already dork around on Window's without paying any month-to-month fees, I did the ball with hello world thing years ago, heck it even bounced and beeped when it hit the ground.  Now, I want to just dork around on an XBOX 360.  There is a difference.

So basically, you're saying that you "deserve" the right to use, for free, what cost others millions of dollars of research work.

Guess I understand now ;)

I said I would be willing to pay up front for a sense of ownership but I didn't want to pay a subscription where it is implicit (explicit?) that I don't own my work.

I said exactly that, no more.  No less.  This is the same problem as the last time I tried to talk to you, worthless strawman attacks.

Paying for XNA at this time feels a bit like paying for being a part of a community built up of content from their members.

Dude, where does it say anywhere that using XNA means that you don't own your work? You are the one throwing "strawman" arguments around, not me.

So like paying to join the SA forums?

Hehe, yeah, needless to say I'm not a member there  :-)

You said that I didn't want to pay for the ability to use the XNA system.  Which was pure a bullshit made up thing to attack me on as I had jsut said I would pay up front but not a sub.  That is the definition of a STRAWMAN.

If I don't continue to subscribe to creators club then how am I going to use the content that I created since it is only available to creators club members?  I.e. I no longer own the content I created.

God, your so full of shit you don't even recognize it as it spews out of your mouth.

Ahem.

What do you mean you no longer "own" the content you created? You are the one making stuff up. Microsoft does not suddenly steal your game's copyright when you upload it to your Xbox 360. Yes MS restricts what you can play on the Xbox 360 uploaded through XNA but the game is still sitting there on your PC's hard drive. You still own your game.

And GSE, and the binary for Torque X, and the TGB-X tools, and everything else except for a little widget on your XBox360 that you are no longer paying for.

Thanks Trippy, I honestly thought it was just me.

Vitriol against Microsoft aside, the cross-platform aspect of this is pretty cool. Yeah, sure, there is a lot left out, and no game built for the 360 will take advantae of all that a high-end PC gaming rig has to offer. But as a hobbyist I would gladly trade a bit of the shiny for the cross-platform. As a first step this is not bad. I'd say the price point would be more attractive if it were a one-time $99 payment, though, with perhaps paying for additional features (networking, etc.) as they become available.

Oh, and I guess I'd need to care enough about consoles to own one. :)

That said, this could be fun to mess with just on the PC - sort of a NeverwinterNights++.

Fine, whatever.  He can make up BS and attack me with it because he's got a red name and every one else can poo-poo that Microsoft controls the access rights to your work through their subscription service and license agreements and obviously none of that are valid issues.

I've said my piece, I've pointed out what, in my view, are two major flaws with this system I'm moving on.  You guys want to pay increasing costs of ownership over time and lose control of your work for any reason under the sun you go right on trucking.

You do not lose control of your work. I'm not sure why you keep thinking that but let me give you another example. Let's say you are a photographer and you subscribe for one of those upload/sharing/gallery services. At some point you decide to stop paying the subscription fee. Now your photos you uploaded are "stuck" there. They won't let you download them back to your machine unless you resubscribe or pay a transfer fee. Hell some of them even charge you to download the originals when you are a subscriber (yes there really are services like that). However, you still have your originals on your machine unless you deleted them and you still own the copyrights on all your photos. Uploading them to the service doesn't suddenly mean you've given away all your rights to your photos.

So think of XNA Creator's Club as a service MS is providing that let's you run your XNA Windows XP games on an Xbox 360. If you stop paying for the service you obviously lose access to the service. You don't lose access to your game unless you happened to delete it from your Windows XP machine but that's not MS fault, just like if you made the mistake of deleting your original photos after you uploaded them to a service (and I know people who have done that, unfortunately), and you don't give up your rights on the game by using the service either.

Why on earth do you think some example of a poor artist losing access to his work, effort and lively hood is a reasonable example for the benefits of a subscription service is beyond my ability to comprehend.

I don't like the tone this thread has taken.  People have a right to question anything if they're expected to invest in it (time, money, creativity, whatever).


/out

I give up.

The funniest thing is, you never freaking upload ANYTHING to microsoft, but folks are so stuck in their misconceptions that they don't even bother to ask.

Microsoft never sees a single line of your code, unless you send it to them. The Creators Club is a marketplace service you buy on YOUR 360, and when you deploy a game to the 360, it's via your LAN at your home.

Except that the info on their Web site does say that you have to launch your game through a special launcher and the info implies that if you aren't subscribed the launcher doesn't work, which makes sense to me since MS is selling it as a service. Unfortunately Murgos seems to think he has a god-given right to run whatever games he wants to on his Xbox 360 so anything that restricts that is a limitation on his rights.

I was going to post this as an edit above but I'll stick it down here so as not to abuse the feature:

Well, Zepp?  Do I have to have a subscription to Creators Club to run my packages on hardware I own or not?  Your last post seems to imply no, but that is pretty much counter to everything said so far and the language on the XNA website.

What was difficult to understand?

--you subscribe to Creators Club, which downloads the XNA framework to your retail 360.
--You make your game with GSE on your PC.
--via your LAN (emphasis added), you deploy from your PC to your 360.

Nothing is ever uploaded to Microsoft in this process.

Separated this out:


I'm not trying to sell a damned thing.
The Torque X binary is free.
GSE is free.
XNA is free.

If you want to deploy to your XBox 360, that's your call, and it's the only thing in this process that costs money. Microsoft (NOT GG) has elected to make that a subscription service, with two separate options: yearly, and a 4 month deal. If you join Creators Club, you get to use the TGB-X editor as well (which is not free, I admit).

Hey, guess what? XBLive Arcade is a subscription service too--I don't hear you complaining about what happens if you cancel that...

So, you think the answer to my concern is semantics?  What pipe the bits have to travel through to reach their destination?

Five or six times now I have expressed the concern that with this service I cannot predict when I will be allowed to execute my code on my hardware and you think I have a problem with what router is in between my computer and my XBOX?

Are you kidding me?

Edit:  And don't give me BS about how being included in this package doesn't mean anything to GG.  One of MS's most effective tools for market share has been getting people developing on their OS as a hobbist/student and gaining familiarity with their tools (and thus preference for working on them) prior to entering the work force.

Edit 2:  You know, I would be happy if MS wanted to break the Creators Club up into two products.  The first one being a purchased license for one XBOX (transferable) to compile and run code created with your XNA licence.  And the second one being a subscription distribution service where people who are subscribed can download each others XNA developed applications.

That would be perfectly peachy to me.

Never has your ubersoft avatar been more apt, murgos.

If you don't like the licensing cost for the 360, there's an easy solution.  Run it on your PC.  That way, you can play your game without owing recurring cost to MS as well as stop acting like an ass to a dev.

Sorry, I forgot that I am not allowed to disagree as to the amazing value of this service.  So, Roac, my choices are to accept the status quo and stfu or accept the status quo and stfu?

Thanks for your input, it's been very helpful.

You're allowed, and people are equally allowed to call bullshit when you spout nonsensical crap like this:


Because it's not only available to creators club members.  It's available on your PC, and you still own it.  No, you can't play it on your 360 without fronting a recurring cost, but that has nothing to do with anything you've actually said. 

I think Murgos just has the problem that if he ends his sub, he can no longer play games he had already uploaded onto his 360 when he was paying the fee to MS. I can kind of see why that might be a problem with some people.

You could always email an expose to tips@kotaku.com.

Was able to talk to some of the Xbox team at GDC, good stuff going on there, I'm wondering if there will be a student rate on this. Of course there are other ways to monetize this that could lower the cost but eh....you got to get them hooked early :)

I think that sucks too, and I wouldn't pay it if I had a 360.  But I also only use Visual Studio Express at home, or else Sharpdevelop, or just skip MS altogether and mess with Java.  Or take my work laptop home and work on that.  I think I still have Pascal install disks if I'm really frisky.  There's enough tools out there that if I have an itch to develop something, I don't have to pay anyone anything and so refuse to do so.  And that's fine, since no matter how cheap Stephen thinks $9/mo is for a hobby, that's still $9/mo too much for some people.  But Murgos didn't nail Stephen for that, he went off the deep end with how he doesn't own his stuff anymore.

I disagree Roac, I've already commented on why I feel so extensively so I will leave it there.

That is kind of sucky. What happens if MS discontinues the program?

They've either worked it out already or would need to in time, but my guess would be one of the following:

• You don't get to use the Xbox 360 to play your game anymore, but can still (obviously) play it on your PC.
• They collect one more one-time fee from you to allow you to upload content to your Xbox 360, but they turn off the ability to share it.

Companies pay to license console development platforms. If they stop paying, they nominally need to stop using that platform. XNA is not so different from that except to gamers who've become used to development and deployment on the "free" PC.

People will pay this fee gladly because of the opportunities it presents. Anyone can create a casual game these days, but getting it out to the public in the highly contested marketplace it has become can be a bear for any but companies with established publishing/distributing partners. For the PC crowd you get things like Pjio and Kongregate.

But console casual games are virgin territory. They won't be for much longer of course, but the perception of much higher conversion rates interests anyone (ie, GGs own Marble Blast was something like, what, 55% conversion rate for awhile on XBLA, during the first 4 or so months?). And Xbox 360 is way out front on this, from both an integration and seamless distribution standpoint. The others will eventually catch up of course.

Whether you agree with the concept of the fee or not is irrelevant because the fee will be paid. Because participants already paid the expensive upfront charges of good-enough PC, Xbox 360, and Broadband. The fee for XNA sharing is like helping your buddy fund a FPS game host server. Low and worth it.