Microsoft’s Game Studio thing

So, Microsoft are releasing a free game development tool, complete with obligatory name that begins with X.

The XNA Game Studio Express beta will be available 30th August, 2006, as a free download on Windows XP, for development on the Windows XP platform. XNA Game Studio Express will give anyone with a Windows XP-based PC access to a unified development tool that liberates the creation of great Xbox 360 and Windows XP-compatible games, providing a new alternative to the existing multithousand-dollar development kits that many console games require. The final version of XNA Game Studio Express will be available this holiday season…

…By joining a “creators club” for an annual subscription fee of $99 USD (or local currency equivalent), users will be able to build, test and share their games on Xbox 360â„¢ and access a wealth of materials to help speed the game development progress…

…GarageGames, technology provider and developer of one of the most successful Xbox Live® Arcade titles, “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.

(emphasis mine)

Sounds good to me. Well, except for the thought of paying $99 to distribute on Xbox 360 but compared to buying development softare, pitching to a publisher, marketing costs, distribution costs and all that, it’s just a no brainer for bedroom development. Assuming of course that this is a bit more stable than Visual Studio 2003 which is, frankly, a bit crap. Visual Studio 2005 Express versions seem much more stable, so I’m optimistic on this. The only downside, as far as I can see, will be the inevitable plethora of games with really crappy proofreading.

And it’s free! I like free. Giving things for free is good.

Until I release my own game, obviously ;)

Update 15th Aug 2006: I missed the XNA Team Blog yesterday:

Because this is a blog and not the actual press announcement, I can talk about the big obvious hole in the plan. When we ship XNA Game Studio Express this fall, you will be able to share your final product with anyone on your windows machine that you want, but there is no support for sharing Xbox binaries other than sending your source around. We fully intend to fix this in the future, and if I have anything to do about it, it will be sooner than later.

Worth keeping an eye on…

4 Comments