Make (and play) your own Xbox game

[mouser]

Microsoft is trying to turn hard-core gamers into Xbox programmers.

The company plans to show off on Monday a new set of developer tools that will let college students, hobbyists and others create their own games for the Xbox 360 console, for a Windows PC or both.

Dubbed XNA Game Studio Express, the free software is expected to be available in beta form by the end of the month, with a final product available sometime this holiday season.

"The tools we are talking about make it way easier to make games than it is today," said Scott Henson, director for platform strategy for Microsoft's game developer group. Microsoft will demonstrate the new software at Gamefest, a company-run show for game developers that takes place in Seattle this week.

http://news.com.com/Play+your+own+Xbox+game/2100-1043_3-6104939.html?tag=nefd.top

[mouser]

see also:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060813-7490.html

[Gothi[c]]

Interesting,... Microsoft on the GameMaker studio boat,...

What's the catch?

I can't help but wonder how flexible this will be and how fast (or slow) it will be.
I mentioned slow because .NET was mentioned in the article,... .Net...games...?...eww :p
And after having seen the system requirements for Vista, I'm afraid to find out the requirements for this one.

[mouser]

More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/14/technology/14game.html

[rkarman]

link=topic=4796.msg33872#msg33872 date=1155549025]
I can't help but wonder how flexible this will be and how fast (or slow) it will be.
I mentioned slow because .NET was mentioned in the article,... .Net...games...?...eww :p
And after having seen the system requirements for Vista, I'm afraid to find out the requirements for this one.

i think dotnet is especially good for building games, the execution of code is at 50% to 90% of c++ code and with cpu's getting faster each month, i think developing in c# can only bring more complex games faster to the market. i read that managed direct x is running at about 90% of unmanaged direct x, so there is not much there to worry about either.

of course if you look at the average dotnet code (written without understanding) it is many times slower then optimized c++ code, but just doing some simple things like checking what you're about to do instead of wring that try/catch can improve speed factors to over a 1000 times (yes i tested this to convice my coworkers to program differently)

one thing is for sure, to port my pacman to xbox i would choose C# over C++ any day of the week

then a lil about visa: in vista the UI is made with game technology, this adds a lot of extra to the specs. yet if you compare what you need for vista to any modern game console specs, then visa isn't doing bad at all.

[Renox]

Thats too cool... I can't wait to get my hands on that!

[f0dder]

$99 a year... not bad, I guess. I wonder if your "product" has to go through Microsoft before it's playable on the xbox360... if not, I wonder what the security implications are (ie., will this enable people to RE and/or modchip the machine any faster?)

[mouser]

useful follow up, the Torque engine is being made compatible with this:
http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=13516

[mouser]

First beta is now available for download:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/xna/gse/