Raph’s Website » MS goes after the amateur

MS goes after the amateur

August 14th, 2006 (Visited 4625 times) Tags:

Gamasutra brings us word that Microsoft is going to enable amateurs to develop for the 360. At first, it looks like it’s for a “club” style sandbox only, not for the general public, but it does hold out hope for totally indie games to make it out to the hands of the general population someday.

Looks like the platform will be Torque, which is already widely used. Of course, still a fairly high barrier of entry for the 3d stuff, but Torque does have a nifty 2d game tool suite as well.

Also, and importantly, there’s university curriculum support: USC, Georgia Tech, and Guildhall will be adding this to their coursework.

This was tried before, with Sony’s Net Yaroze project, which didn’t seem to go anywhere. However, given the already vibrant Torque game community, I can only think that this effort will be more successful.

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Casual Game Dev wrote on August 23rd, 2006 at 12:02 am:

Seth Godin’s Web 2.0 Traffic Watch List on Alexaholic.com Free Game Downloads: A New Game Everyday! Arcade games for your PC: Arcade Lab free downloads Jim on Web Games XNA Team Blog XNA Team Blog Jim on Web Games Raph%u2019s Website � MS goes after the amateur

Water Cooler Games wrote on August 14th, 2006 at 7:31 am:

Roll Your Own XBox 360 Games? Maybe…

As you have probably heard by now, Microsoft announced yesterday that they would offer a consumer-grade version of their XNA Game Studio product, allowing ordinary people to make games that run on the Xbox 360. XNA Game Studio Express will…

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GameDevMike wrote on August 14th, 2006 at 10:12 am:

More Details on XNA Game Studio Express

IGDA Forums - WOOT! Xbox 360 devkit on the cheap! wrote on August 17th, 2006 at 8:33 am:

[...] By the way, there’s a thread on this subject on Raph Koster’s blog, here. [...]

tuebit said on August 14th, 2006 at 6:01 am:

Where did you read that the platform for 360 development would be Torque?

Trucegore said on August 14th, 2006 at 6:08 am:

This was known by the torque community for a while, in fact i think marble blast ultra was the first game using the TSE on Xbox 360.(you can download it if you have an xbox 360 off the network) Most of the support is for the Torque Shader Engine and the Torque Game Builder (that’s the 2d one)

There are also rumors that we shall get dev kits for the Wii also.

My game is already in development using the TGE =) and the ability to be on the Wii is pleasing me greatly.

tuebit said on August 14th, 2006 at 6:33 am:

Thanks Trucegore. I now see that the linked article clearly states that (did they update the article, or am I suddenly unable to read?).

teamonkey said on August 14th, 2006 at 8:07 am:

Hi Raph.

It just says that GarageGames have ported Torque and Torque2D to the XNA platform. It means that there’s a couple of low-cost engines available for indies to use right from the word go. It looks like it’s a C#-based environment.

There’s a FAQ here that clarifies pretty much everything.

Peter said on August 14th, 2006 at 11:09 am:

The primary reason that the Net Yaroze project didn’t go anywhere was that SCE didn’t allow people to exchange games – except with other Net Yaroze users. Thus, they limited the audience to the 1000 units that they allowed in the US.

However, SCEA knew of several people who got jobs as a result of the Net Yaroze work (among other things to be accurate), so in this regard, they were quite happy with the result of the program. After all, they did intend the program for budding game developers.

-P

Raph said on August 14th, 2006 at 11:58 am:

According to Kim Pallister, you have to give out all your source code and assets to share your games, at least at first. Hopefully, this will develop in different ways over time; many will be reluctant to effectively put everything they do in the public domain. The Live Arcade process has become so exlcusive and slow that it is no longer an indie developers’ paradise, but they won’t want to be on this version either with those sorts of limitations.

Granted that the emphasis is on hobbyists and students, it would nonetheless be a good idea for Ms to embrace the very thing that is making the PC game world so interesting these days, and that’s the long tail of indie niche content that is developing fairly rapidly over the last few years. Not scaring away indie devs would be a good step. I’ve read something about a possible “pro” version of this plan, slated for 2008 perhaps? I’d love to hear more on that.

Tess said on August 14th, 2006 at 2:08 pm:

Anytime I hear someone say, “PC is Dead!” what I’m really hearing is “Screw the little guy!” because the barrier of entry for console development is way the hell too high. So, I’m a big proponent of legal hobbyist kits for consoles. As much as I’m a huge defender of the PC platform (I don’t even have a TV in my apartment), I’m also a realist. There’s a great value in students and hobbyists being able to work on console games, even if it’s only in a limited capacity.

Morgan Ramsay said on August 14th, 2006 at 3:04 pm:

Michael Russell posted his initial concerns about XNA Game Studio Express.

Brew said on August 14th, 2006 at 3:25 pm:

This is all great for the amateur programmers out there, theoretically, but it’s really a small niche.

What i’d REALLY like to see is games with built in construction sets/level editorsm like NWN, Starcraft, and such, on consoles. With the 360’s microtransaction model, Players could upload their level/map, and put it for sale.

The add ons for oblivion are a good example of small addons, with small price tags ($2-3)

If MS set the price range, on a game by game basis, with players earning a 10% cut, (player generated map costs 150 points, player earns 15 pts every purchase) It could be quite a booming business for MS. Keeping the pay to the creator virtual (microsoft marketplace points) would be a smart decision…

I’d like to see market place points become more useful, with full game purchases, and live membership purchase as well, but doubt that it’d happen.

One things for sure tho, the xbox360 20gb hard drive was shortsighted, and we’re all gonna need more space soon!

Rik said on August 14th, 2006 at 10:32 pm:

This can only be a good thing. Maybe a small thing, but a good thing.

Brian said on August 17th, 2006 at 12:13 am:

Tools are great, but yes, you really need a distribution story of some sort. Especially if the tools are locked-in to a specific platform. Sure some people are willing to take the leap and hope that they’ll impress someone and *somehow* get their stuff shipped… but if I were building a game project for the PC, I have the possibility of online/shareware sales at least.

Give me the ability to upload my game, choose a $5-20 price (msft would get some standard cut), and let people give it a spin. Maybe without any content verification it’s only purchasable by 18+ players. It’s a closed, secure platform (in theory at least!) — Allow a buyer to “return” something that they don’t like or is broken within a 15 or 30 minute window or whatnot.

Have a process for reviewing games that are available for download such that the best of the best could be pushed into a more generally accessable area or a bizdev guy could get in touch with the indie developer if they think it’s worth it. Everybody wins.

Cheap devkits that *anyone* can buy is a great step forward, but the real thing that’ll change the world will be distribution that’s much more open.

Brian

Morgan Ramsay said on August 17th, 2006 at 8:49 am:

For more information:

Gamerscore Blog (from the Microsoft Games Global Marketing team)

XNA Team Blog

MSDN XNA Developer Center