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.

In an official statement related to this major announcement, Microsoft suggested that the new product " ...will democratize game development by delivering the necessary tools to hobbyists, students, indie developers and studios alike to help them bring their creative game ideas to life while nurturing game development talent, collaboration and sharing that will benefit the entire industry."

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.

Microsoft has enlisted the help of several partners for this major announcement - indie publisher/developer GarageGames, technology provider and creator of Marble Blast Ultra, has migrated both its Torque Shader Engine and new Torque Game Builder 2-D visual game designer over to the XNA Game Studio Express platform, and Autodesk announced that game developers and enthusiasts can now more easily incorporate content into XNA Game Studio Express via Autodesk' s FBX file exchange format.

In addition, more than 10 universities and their game development schools — including University of Southern California, Georgia Tech College of Computing and Southern Methodist University Guildhall — have already pledged to integrate console game development and XNA Game Studio Express into their curricula for the first time, and Xbox 360 will be the only console at the center of all coursework.

The XNA Game Studio Express beta will be available Aug. 30, 2006, as a free download on Windows XP, for development on the Windows XP platform. The final version of XNA Game Studio Express will be available this holiday season.

Microsoft' s general manager of the Game Developer Group, Chris Satchell, commented on this major announcement: " By unlocking retail Xbox 360 consoles for community-created games, we are ushering in a new era of cross-platform games based on the XNA platform. We are looking forward to the day when all the resulting talent-sharing and creativity transforms into a thriving community of user-created games on Xbox 360."

[UPDATE - 08/13/06, 9.30pm PST - added further information on universality of user-created games.]

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=10458

I think in theory it' s a valiant effort and approach. With all the complaints about dev costs this could be a simplistic environment for people to test their ideas out without the big risks....and give people who have little skills a place to progress.

great news for all 360 owners.Incredibly smart move on MS side.This further distinguishes 360 from it' s competitors.Another strenght is given to MS camp.

I' m quite surprised sony didn' t think of something like this earlier. Because if you think about it in theory it attracts a whole different audience not the hardcore gamer but the student and anyone interested in learning about development and coding more than playing, so you have another community. But thats in theory....now i' m really psyched to see what they are gonna announce at tokyo both sony and ms.

How did that Net Yaroze thing work?

By the way anyone wanna predict a sony counter or parallel with LINUX?.

like ginjirou said - Sony did just that a while ago with it' s net yaroze , but MS is doing it better - everyone has a PC and it will be very accesible to people.Yaroze was pretty expensive.

Net Yaroze was like a debugging unit with some added features and connectivity.

the support is a great thing, and new talent is allways great to see.

I want to see if I can get a kit just to fuck around with it. Wouldn' t it be cool if Kikizo members made their own Xbox Live arcade game?

Added info..

Following Microsoft' s announcement regarding its XNA Game Studio Express, which will allow students and indie developers to join a XNA Creators Club in order to share and develop Xbox 360 and PC games, the company has released an online FAQ explaining the service.

The overview explains: " XNA Game Studio Express will enable you to create Windows and now Xbox 360 console games much more easily. These games are limited to non-commercial scenarios for 360 titles created with XNA Game Studio Express. However, XNA Game Studio Express may be used to create commercial games which target Windows. We will be releasing XNA Game Studio Professional next spring which will allow developers to create commercial games for Xbox 360 in addition to Windows."

Particularly interesting is information concerning how Xbox content will be shared among users. Microsoft has clarified how the distribution of user-created content will work, by noting that " there is currently no supported way to share binaries on the Xbox 360" , explaining “...currently, there are four requirements that must be met in order to share a game targeting Xbox 360 which is developed with XNA Game Studio Express.”

These requirements include that the intended recipient of the content must be logged in to Xbox Live and have an active subscription to the XNA Creators Club, must have downloaded the XNA Framework runtime environment for the Xbox 360, and must have XNA Game Studio Express installed on their own development PC.

Following this, once receiving the content, including all source and content assets, the project must then be compiled and loaded onto the recipient' s Xbox 360 in order to be viewed. The FAQ also reveals: " Games developed using XNA Game Studio Express cannot be shared through a memory card at this time."

In addition, it' s noted that full Xbox 360 support will not start with the August Beta of XNA Game Studio Express: " Microsoft does not release beta software on the Xbox 360 for security reasons. Thanks to the design and implementation of the XNA Framework on both Windows and Xbox 360 however, games developed using the XNA Game Studio Express beta starting August 30th will be easily adapted to run against the Xbox 360 retail console upon availability of the finished tools later this holiday."

The full XNA FAQ has much more information regarding technical specifics on the new XNA tools rolling out throughout 2006 and 2007.

Come get your XNA express!

http://editorials.teamxbox.com/xbox/1688/XNA-Game-Studio-Express-Power-to-the-Gamers/p1/

ORIGINAL: Agent Ghost

Come get your XNA express!

http://editorials.teamxbox.com/xbox/1688/XNA-Game-Studio-Express-Power-to-the-Gamers/p1/

Thanks for that...have to say it looks really exciting...but I know hardly anything about developing.

I had a hunch something along these lines might happen.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2006/6/22/4415

" ...allow me to share a related story. A little over a year ago, one of the people in my group modded an Xbox, installed Avalaunch(info), and put all sorts of Xbox mod scene apps on the box, like XboxMediaCenter(info), RSS readers, etc, along with some " backup" games. He brought this box along to a meeting with Bill Gates. Bill saw a demo of this, was quite impressed, and asked something along the lines of " How can we engage this community?" - instead of saying something like " How can we squash this?" It' s long been on the back of everyone' s minds in the Xbox group - how can we get students and hobbyists involved without disrupting the console business model? The good news is that it' s still on the radar, we' ll see what happens in the future."

I guess this is one step towards engaging people a little more without disrupting things too much.

I like it.

Actually, didn' t the original Playstation do the exact same thing before? More or less. It was a basic dev kit, with 2 MB of space for you stuff your game in...

Anyway, I really love this! When I go to Uni next year, this means I can do both a commercially-viable project AND term projects at the same time (thinking of joining the Game Design department at the Uni).

Anyone know if the MUGEN engine can be combined with this? I know ZILCH abt programming, but I have a fighting game I really want to transport to consoles...

yeah we' ve talked about net yaroze a few posts eariler.

What MS did is amazing.I had my Xbox modded with all the mods that were available and it' s a great thing to have it legally now :)

this is GREAT news!!

I' m going to enquire about geting a copy for my 1st years!