GDC 08: XNA Bring Community Games to Xbox Live
A few years ago, Microsoft unveiled XNA, a set of game development tools that facilitates game design and management. XNA basically allows anyone to create games for the Xbox 360 and the PC. Today at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Microsoft announced that game creators will be able to distribute their work on Xbox Live. Chris Satchell, head of Microsoft’s game development group, talked about the Creators Club Initiative. The initiative lets developers in community submit a game, which would then go through a peer review process. If chosen, the game would then be available for download on XBL. But that’s not all. Satchell also said XNA-created games will also be available to play on Microsoft’s Zune portable music and video player.
Oh, and here’s another tidbit from Microsoft’s John Schappert’s keynote. The highly-anticipated Gears of War 2 will be released in November.
At one stroke Microsoft have removed all the barriers to game development and more importantly to game publishing. We will have a flowering of innovation and creativity beyond anything the game industry has ever seen before. Probably beyond what any creative industry has ever seen before. The last explosion in gaming creativity was the bedroom Sinclair Spectrum coders in the 1980s (we have been going downhill creatively ever since), this will be thousands of times bigger. The possibilities are infinite.
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