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BREAKING: Microsoft To Enable User-Created Xbox 360 Games

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The Faceless Master said:
actually, gamers should be upset that they won't be able to have the option to try out every little thing that someone comes up with this thing without shelling out $99/yr...

but other than that, yeah, it's great.

They shouldn't actually, because Microsoft has already pointed out that the goal of this program is to open up a YouTube like channel of user created games that, obviously, pass a (presumably) abridged certification process.
 
BenjaminBirdie said:
They shouldn't actually, because Microsoft has already pointed out that the goal of this program is to open up a YouTube like channel of user created games that, obviously, pass a (presumably) abridged certification process.


Ding! Correct!
 

gofreak

GAF's Bob Woodward
PjotrStroganov said:
I wonder if games can be distributed for free.

They have to be, for now anyway, at least for 360.

Q: Can I use the XNA Game Studio Express or XNA Framework to build a commercial Xbox 360 game?
A: 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 addition to Windows.
 

syllogism

Member
I don't get it, why would someone want to make freeware games for 360 and not PC if on 360 you have to pay for it? I suppose we could see freeware PC games being ported to 360 though. Still, nice move by microsoft.
 

Piper Az

Member
BenjaminBirdie said:
They shouldn't actually, because Microsoft has already pointed out that the goal of this program is to open up a YouTube like channel of user created games that, obviously, pass a (presumably) abridged certification process.

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

In the first incarnation, games developed using the free tools will be available only to like-minded hobbyists, not the Xbox community as a whole. Those who want to develop games will have to pay a $99 fee to be part of a "Creators' Club," a name that is likely to change. Games developed using XNA Game Studio Express will be playable only by others who are part of the club.

Next spring, Microsoft hopes to have a broader set of tools that will allow for games to be created that can then be sold online through Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade. Microsoft will still control which games get published, and it'll get a cut of the revenue.

Down the road, probably three to five years from now, Microsoft hopes to have an open approach, where anyone can publish games, and community response helps separate the hits from the flops.

It's going to take time to be a next Youtube, but it's still a good deal.
 
BenjaminBirdie said:
They shouldn't actually, because Microsoft has already pointed out that the goal of this program is to open up a YouTube like channel of user created games that, obviously, pass a (presumably) abridged certification process.
when (or *IF* ??) that happens, gamers can stop being upset.

but before that, you aren't a real gamer if you aren't a little miffed at this...

just saying that initially it's not all it's cooked up to be... needs more salt...
 

gofreak

GAF's Bob Woodward
syllogism said:
I don't get it, why would someone want to make freeware games for 360 and not PC if on 360 users have to pay $99/year to play them?

I think the idea is to migrate to an open distribution model. Initially I guess the motivation is in the act of simply making the game rather than audience.e

edit - 3 to 5 years? :/
 
gofreak said:
They have to be, for now anyway, at least for 360.

After reading the article more carefully it looks like it. Not that I dont want to pay for these kind of games but I'm allready forseeing a system( like iTunes) where content has to cost money. Even if the maker wants to distribute it for free.

After reading Piper Az's article, I'm not so sure.
 
The Faceless Master said:
when (or *IF* ??) that happens, gamers can stop being upset.

but before that, you aren't a real gamer if you aren't a little miffed at this...

just saying that initially it's not all it's cooked up to be... needs more salt...

Yeah, personally I don't want to spend my time playing broke shit. I guarantee you anything made from this worth playing will playable long before LiveTube is released. The entire environment is going to exist under the watchful eye of MS and they'll know pretty quickly when something in this space is gaining people's interest.
 

Cosmozone

Member
White Man said:
Back then people stood in line for Windows with an empty grin on their faces. End of story, before Linux arrived you couldn't run any PC program without paying MS if you wanted or not. I just hope this doesn't happen with .NET/XNA. Yes, this is bad news and my hate for MS has reached new heights just now. MS doesn't just get more followers for their platform, no, they're also willing to PAY for supporting it.
 

Proelite

Member
Cosmozone said:
Back then people stood in line for Windows with an empty grin on their faces. End of story, before Linux arrived you couldn't run any PC program without paying MS if you wanted or not. I just hope this doesn't happen with .NET/XNA. Yes, this is bad news and my hate for MS has reached new heights just now. MS doesn't just get more followers for their platform, no, they're also willing to PAY for supporting it.

Why is this a bad thing?
 

Tieno

Member
Cosmozone said:
Back then people stood in line for Windows with an empty grin on their faces. End of story, before Linux arrived you couldn't run any PC program without paying MS if you wanted or not. I just hope this doesn't happen with .NET/XNA. Yes, this is bad news and my hate for MS has reached new heights just now. MS doesn't just get more followers for their platform, no, they're also willing to PAY for supporting it.
Paying for a product/service! The audacity!
 
BenjaminBirdie said:
Yeah, personally I don't want to spend my time playing broke shit. I guarantee you anything made from this worth playing will playable long before LiveTube is released. The entire environment is going to exist under the watchful eye of MS and they'll know pretty quickly when something in this space is gaining people's interest.
you mean anything deemed 'worth playing' by whoever is in charge of deeming what is worth playing...

and the whole "i dont wanna play broke shit" thing is cool for you as it suits your needs just fine, but some people don't mind playing "broke shit" and seeing what ideas someone else has and how they develop them...
 

Piper Az

Member
Cosmozone said:
Back then people stood in line for Windows with an empty grin on their faces. End of story, before Linux arrived you couldn't run any PC program without paying MS if you wanted or not. I just hope this doesn't happen with .NET/XNA. Yes, this is bad news and my hate for MS has reached new heights just now. MS doesn't just get more followers for their platform, no, they're also willing to PAY for supporting it.

Simply put, you want everything for free...

and the whole "i dont wanna play broke shit" thing is cool for you as it suits your needs just fine, but some people don't mind playing "broke shit" and seeing what ideas someone else has and how they develop them...

then join the "Creators' Club", man!
 

Razoric

Banned
Piper Az said:
http://news.com.com/Play+your+own+Xbox+game/2100-1043_3-6104939.html?tag=nefd.lede



It's going to take time to be a next Youtube, but it's still a good deal.

Why do they say Youtube? Bad comparison. Youtube is a site were people find funny clips and put them on the internet for people to see.

Newgrounds is what they are trying to mimic. It's original user created content that is reviewed and judged completely by the registered users at the site. Good shit rises to the top, aweful crap sinks to the bottom.
 
SteveMeister said:
Core owners am buying $100 HDD peripheral if they want to participate. They're not left without any options as your post seems to imply.

well yeah, although once you buy the hard drive, I wouldn't really consider one a "core" owner anymore.

Depends on how you want to read it I guess
 

Proelite

Member
BlueTsunami said:
If the shit is broke, I don't want to pay for it. I don't mind if its broke if I can play the game for free.

I think the idea here is to allow people to develop small 360 games for a very, very cheap price. People playing the games are not a big deal.
 
The Faceless Master said:
you mean anything deemed 'worth playing' by whoever is in charge of deeming what is worth playing...

and the whole "i dont wanna play broke shit" thing is cool for you as it suits your needs just fine, but some people don't mind playing "broke shit" and seeing what ideas someone else has and how they develop them...

To clarify, I don't want to play "broke shit" on my already fragile console. As far as I know, these restrictions do not exist on the PC side? I wouldn't mind running some ghetto shit on a PC just to see what's going on. Then again, I fully intend to drop the $100 bucks anyway, but I don't think I'll be downloading stuff willynilly unless it directly relates to something I'm working on.

And I think MS has a pretty solid notion of what's "Worth Playing" in the independent scene (Darwinia, Castle Crashers, et al).
 

gofreak

GAF's Bob Woodward
PjotrStroganov said:
After reading the article more carefully it looks like it. Not that I dont want to pay for these kind of games but I'm allready forseeing a system( like iTunes) where content has to cost money. Even if the maker wants to distribute it for free.

After reading Piper Az's article, I'm not so sure.

The "professional" suite of tools coming out next Spring will allow you to make XBLA (commercial) content, that has to be approved by MS of course. The free stuff, the Express edition, can only be made for non-commercial games currently.

I'm more concerned about how quickly it'll take for that arena to be opened up to all users (i.e. via a "YouTube" of user-created games). It almost sounds like something they're targetting for the next Xbox, given the cited timeframe. So maybe you will have to become part of that club for longer than I thought if you want access to that content.
 

jgkspsx

Member
Soon as I can, uh, get household agreement on the funds, I'm in -- though I guess there's no reason you need a 360 to be part of a development team, so long as you're using the .NET Compact Framework (or the XNA equivalent)?
gofreak said:
You can sign up for the beta now (and I have, even though I'm 360-less at the moment :p).
Where? I'm not finding it.
 

Kleevah

Member
thorns said:
Surely we 'll never have GRAW with managed directx and C#, but we might have Geometry Wars. But maybe on Xbox720 it will be possible to have something as advanced as GRAW using just C# and managed DirectX.

Well, it's claimed that Managed DirectX has 98% of standard C++ performance, a figure i don't doubt at all. I've been writing some MDX projects lately using C# and I am extremely impressed with the speed. Everything i throw at it runs super smooth, and the reduced amount of code needed to actually get things working is a great plus.

I see no real reason why not the next GRAW could be made in a managed language. The good integration of .Net in Windows and the way it handles CIL/MSIL with the JIT should provide enough raw power to handle a full fledged game with no problems. If anything i think the problem would be the devs not knowing how to write hi-performance managed code, not the language itself.


Anyway, good to see Microsoft doing something right for once, now let's just hope Nintendo has something like this slated for the Wii. :D
 
The Faceless Master said:
you mean anything deemed 'worth playing' by whoever is in charge of deeming what is worth playing...

and the whole "i dont wanna play broke shit" thing is cool for you as it suits your needs just fine, but some people don't mind playing "broke shit" and seeing what ideas someone else has and how they develop them...

that's a good point and exactly what ive been thinking about with all this cert process rambling. I think the best solution, if they truly want YouTube gaming, is to have a set number of xbla releases from homebrew on a sched similar to xbla weds. the titles that come out would be by way of voting or soemthing within the homebrew community. some sort of selected by your peers thing. and then a very loose cert process within MS just to make sure its something that they can responsibly make available to the 11yo kid who has a 360. imagine the press feild day when Johnny McPreteen downloads Battle Raper Extreme 2007 on xbla.
 
meltpotato said:
that's a good point and exactly what ive been thinking about with all this cert process rambling. I think the best solution, if they truly want YouTube gaming, is to have a set number of xbla releases from homebrew on a sched similar to xbla weds.

As I've been saying, I fully expect a program like this to precede LiveTube by several years.
 

Cosmozone

Member
Proelite said:
Why is this a bad thing?
How can having to pay for something whether you want or not be a good thing? But this is is the worst case scenario for which I hope that it doesn't come true.

Piper Az said:
Simply put, you want everything for free...
Heh, no. They main thing is, MS tries to force it's proprietary technology for something such general as game development. The paying for the community service is just the usual followers thing. There are free development tools including documentation already, but if it isn't from MS it can't be good, right?
 

jgkspsx

Member
Cosmozone said:
Heh, no. They main thing is, MS tries to force it's proprietary technology for something such general as game development. The paying for the community service is just the usual followers thing. There are free development tools including documentation already, but if it isn't from MS it can't be good, right?
Let me guess: you're not a programmer, right?

(Jesus. "it's proprietary technology for something as general as game development." Christ.)
 
Hey, I just realised something. If Sony actually does have a similar system in the works like they've hinted at, only for free, how is this going to affect all those misguided price-value comparisons people keep posting?

"OMG a 360 will cost u 399 plus 200 for hdvdvd and 150 a year for 5 years for live + dev club kek"

Why are people avoiding the real issues?
 

Lapsed

Banned
Oh man, people are going to hate me for this post. But here goes...

Have you noticed the trend that whenever there is talk about 'indie game development' people's reactions always "OMG it's gonna be a gaming renaissance!" And what happens? You never hear about these supposed great and wonderful 'indie games' that were going to smash the uncreative mold of all gaming. In other words, the 'indie game revolution' never happens.

Why is this? As someone who bought the commercial program from Garage Games and have been in the so-called 'indie game community', I can guarentee you that this move will fizzle just like the other proclaimed 'indie game revolutions'. Most indie game makers have no interest in learning the business. They want to make games for themselves. They want to make THEIR 'dream games'. I have no issue with this except watching these guys go through the highs of their 'ideas' and run smack into the wall of reality is pretty funny. Many of these kids are attempting to make an MMORPG or a Starcraft clone or something else. "ARE YOU INSANE!?" I tell these MMORPG makers. You just aren't going to make the next World of Warcraft with a few people in a few months. Eventually, their 'development' dries up and the team disbands. There is also frequent and blatant copyright abuse which, I suppose, is OK for a non-commercial game but is inexcusable if you're selling your game for money.

The indie-community is far from a bastion of creativity and humble simplicity. Rather, it is a den filled with copycats, with people who want to re-make their 'favorite game', and wannabe designers swelled with the most ridiculous egotism (they all believe their game will be the next 'game of the year').

I don't want to discourage anyone, but I want to point out why there will be no 'revolution' of awesome indie games coming. I have heard this sing-song a million times before. What no one is pointing out is that you could already create user made games for XBLA. Buy a kit from Garage Games and make your game and see if you can sell it to Microsoft. This is what Marble Blast and Mutant Storm basically did (and keep in mind that the developers for both of those are professional game makers, they aren't the usual 'indie' riff-raff) (and the developers for Marble Blast are, of course, some of those who worked on Tribes anyway).

The Torque Engine has many benefits such as being compatible for Windows, Mac, and Linux. But it will not be 'easy' to learn as anyone who has access to the Torque engine will confess. Warren Spector admitted during the development of Deus Ex that if they re-did things, they would not have used the Unreal Tournament engine. Sometimes it is easier to make your own engine than to learn someone else's and modify it to do what you want.

It looks like Garage Games is having some trouble. They have admitted that when Garage Games first appeared, they had many submissions but since then it has tapered off. Most of the stuff they recieve is garbage: just Pac-Man and bad shmup clones. No wonder the games featured on the website have been there for years.

arne said:
Actually, I heard the Torque stuff from GarageGames that is mentioned in the release makes things a lot more newbie friendly than just having to learn C#.

In order to get Torque to do anything interesting, you're going to have to know how to program. Anyone who is expecting some gift from the gods where they can finally make their 'dream game' with 'easy tools' will sorely be disapointed. There will be a learning curve. If you want to get started now or have an idea, go to Garage Games and get a kit now. The kits for the 360, from what I've read and from what Arne is saying, will be very similiar. With Garage Games having so many dry submissions, it makes me think the same will occur with the 360.

We've never seen these 'indie game revolutions zOMG' ever pan out so I believe cynicism to be healthy here.

Here is what I see:

Garage Games, with stagnant submissions and growth, is trying to expand onto the 360.

Garage Games and Microsoft will also open up an avenue of microtransmissions as that $99 is just the beginning. You will have to pay $20 or more a pop for more tutorials, sample content, and so on. I know this because this is how Garage Games already does it at garagegames.com.

Though people will hate me for saying this, when people saw Live as 'innovative' the only thing I saw really innovative was how it charged people for using their own servers. I am in a similiar cynical fashion with this:

Now people are celebrating to pay Microsoft to make games for them! Who is leveraging who?

There is nothing new here. All of this has been available on the PC for several years. Even with the huge PC install base, there was no 'indie revolution'. Why should one expect that to change for the 360 which has a much smaller install base and user base than the PC?

As someone who has worked with these tools, I can clearly say you guys are getting worked up for nothing. Please stop being tools to silly hype. And for heaven's sake, work to build your own business system instead of someone else's (which this is clearly going after...).
 

Proelite

Member
Cosmozone said:
How can having to pay for something whether you want or not be a good thing? But this is is the worst case scenario for which I hope that it doesn't come true.

I didn't know that they were going to force people to pay $99 even if they had no interest in making games.

Cosmozone said:
Heh, no. They main thing is, MS tries to force it's proprietary technology for something such general as game development. The paying for the community service is just the usual followers thing. There are free development tools including documentation already, but if it isn't from MS it can't be good, right?

So, where can I develop games for a 360 for under $99 right now? Give me the link to the developments tools that are out there.
 

RevenantKioku

PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS oh god i am drowning in them
Uh oh, looks like it's time for me to come out of retirement. :D
I used to work on little QBASIC games back in high school, I even had an RPG I made, which was lost to the great Zip disk crash of aught one. :( There used to be a demo availble on the net but it seems to be down. It was a great community of friends that I had, and it was fun to keep trying out each other's demos and getting our games to be better.
I have a tile based smooth scrolling DX engine backed up onto a CD, all done in C++. Wonder if I could squeeze that into this or I should start from scratch...
 

Proelite

Member
Lapsed said:
Now people are celebrating to pay Microsoft to make games for them! Who is leveraging who?

I agree with you that this is probably nothing in the long run, but, hey, more options to get experience is always better.

Btw, don't all developers have to pay Microsoft to make games for them? Devkits are thousands of dollars at least. As on the pc front, sure a lot of tools are free, but XNA express is probably going to stand out as one of the more popular ones.
 

open_mouth_

insert_foot_
maybe this will not amount to much or maybe it will result in some nice things. who knows?

But to sit here and point at corporate greed as to why no one should care about this is ridiculous. Corporations, by definition, are supposed to try to be somewhat greedy at least. They're charging $99/year for those people who want to participate in trying to develop something. It's optional and pretty cheap. Should they give it away for free?

Regardless, such a service being available is better than it not being available at all. I think everyone would agree to that.
 

jgkspsx

Member
Lapsed said:
Oh man, people are going to hate me for this post. But here goes...
This thread is going to turn me from a Microsoft user (I don't even own an XBox) to a Microsoft defender, and I don't appreciate that.

Thank you for your condescending contribution. We know console access is not an originality panacea. However, console access is console access. It's unprecedented on a console (not counting Yaroze), and it's ****ing cool. Deal :)
 

gofreak

GAF's Bob Woodward
open_mouth_ said:
maybe this will not amount to much or maybe it will result in some nice things. who knows?

But to sit here and point at corporate greed as to why no one should care about this is ridiculous. Corporations, by definition, are supposed to try to be somewhat greedy at least. They're charging $99/year for those people who want to participate in trying to develop something. It's optional and pretty cheap. Should they give it away for free?

I think we'll find out the answer when they tell us what your $99/year actually gets you.

I think it should be free to run a binary on your 360. I kind of understand perhaps why they don't want to allow anyone to run anything, but it would be nice, because it would allow an independent, third party to set up that YouTube service (or a number of competing ones) on the open internet, immediately. Well, that could and probably will happen anyway, but only the $99/year people will be able to partake.
 

gofreak

GAF's Bob Woodward
jgkspsx said:
"The content that you requested cannot be found or you do not have permission to view it. "

Did the beta close?

That's strange. It should ask you to sign in using a passport account. If you're already logged in with one of those, maybe try logging out and then going to that link?
 

Blimblim

The Inside Track
jgkspsx said:
"The content that you requested cannot be found or you do not have permission to view it. "

Did the beta close?
I has a page not found error after creating my account, but going back again allowed me to sign up.
 

pr0cs

Member
considering you don't need to spend any money on a compiler, nothing on some decent art tools now and only a minimal charge to get online and share your work with potentially thousands of people I think it's great news.

people saying "you have this already for free on the PC" don't get that the PC doesn't have a unified community that already has a lot of collaboration built into it(Xbox live) . The PC community doesn't have captive audience just waiting for new content where everyone is using 100% the exact same hardware.

I hope this push encourages Sony and Nintendo to create an open development movement with their platforms.
 

Vark

Member
Lapsed said:


While I appreciate your heavy handed dosage of 'reality' You're off on a few points. This is a hobbyist toy for hobbyists. It's to lower the bar, get more people interested and foster bright kids and other people that don't quite have the resources for a 'real' game.

YES there's tons of deluded people out there (about as many waitresses in LA) and yea some people get on about the 'next big thing' not realizing that all they're probably going to end up with is a pac-man clone (if they're lucky).

No one is going to get rich off of this but a lot of people are going to tool around, see their dots move about on a real tv running on a real console, and they're going to think that's really ****ing cool.

As far as Torque. Arne was talking about the Torque Game Builder. Not Torque proper.

It's a full encapsulated tile / particle / level editor where you can basically drag and drop crap and for the most part make a functional 2d game. Everything else you can handle via torque script and get a fully functional 2d game running without ever launching a compilier.

If you can script, you can use TGB.
 

Cosmozone

Member
Proelite said:
I didn't know that they were going to force people to pay $99 even if they had no interest in making games.
Read my posts again. This is the future worst case scenario just as it happened with Windows, not this community service which is only a display for how potential MS followers behave. But it started like this.

So, where can I develop games for a 360 for under $99 right now? Give me the link to the developments tools that are out there.
PC of course. 360 is a proprietary platform. Put it in the right context: I was referring to guys willing to pay 90$ p.a. without hesitation. There are free development tools around with everything included, yet nobody goes crazy about them. Maybe I'm just too sensitive. This is just one thread after all.
 

Proelite

Member
Cosmozone said:
PC of course. 360 is a proprietary platform. Put it in the right context: I was referring to guys willing to pay 90$ p.a. without hesitation. There are free development tools around with everything included, yet nobody goes crazy about them. Maybe I'm just too sensitive. This is just one thread after all.

Well, I guess they were excited by the fact that XNA express allows you to make games for PC free and make games that you can try on your own 360 for free too. It's certainly a step above everything else out there.
 
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