Microsoft To Enable User-Created Xbox 360 Games

simoniker writes "Talking on the eve of its Gamefest event in Seattle, Microsoft has revealed XNA Game Studio Express, a new product which will allow indie developers and students to develop simultaneously on Xbox 360 and PC, and share their games to others in a new Xbox 360 'Creators Club'. XNA Game Studio Express will be available for free to anyone with a Windows XP-based PC, and will provide them with what's described as "Microsoft's next-generation platform for game development." In addition, by joining a "creators club" for an annual subscription fee of $99, users will be able to build, test and share their games on Xbox 360, as well as access a wealth of materials to help speed the game development progress."

Great!

Now I can finally work on that "ringworld" game I've been kicking around in my head...

Re:Great!

We should collaborate - I have an idea for a baking game featuring a Master Chef...

My game will be called...

.... "Linux kernel"

Re:My game will be called...

Game registration error

Microsoft has detected an error in the naming of your game.
The term 'Linux' is a trademarked entity and as such cannot be used as the title of your game.

Sincerely

Billy boy

ps, even if it weren't trademarked, we still wouldn't let you have it you commie pig :P

Re:My game will be called...

Who cares?

This is designed for the hobbyist/amateur game developer. A managed environment built on top of a decent framework from Microsoft will allow a much broader audience of enthusiasts out there to create games. Instead of fumbling with buggy or complicated code, they will actually get to express their creativity and fresh designs.

Re:My game will be called...

No, they're doing this because they are actually starting to lose control of the Game Development market. Recently a number of studios have begun porting and/or developing for Linux. If Microsoft loses the hold on gaming, there is very little left stopping people from switching to Linux entirely. Gaming is the reason most home systems use Microsoft.

See, by "giving" this kit away to amateur gamers, they are essentially guaranteeing a long line of new games which only run under a closed Microsoft platform. This ensures that people will continue buying their Windows OS in order to run the tools/games. It's actually a very strategic move by MS, and unfortunately it is likely to work.

Re:My game will be called...

and mine will be titled: CHAIR-MAN's Flying CHAIRS ... fasten your CHAIR-Belts, 'coz this is gonna' CRASH!! It'll be like Tetris, only instead of bricks, there'll be chairs of different shapes and sizes.

Re:My game will be called...

Someone should make a Donkey Kong clone, only instead of barrels, there are chairs. And well, you can guess who Donkey Kong is...And Mario should be replaced with interchangable sprites, so you can play as whoever's going to be fucking killed that day...

Why a subscription fee?

This sounded pretty cool, and then I hit the 'subscription fee'. Dang, man, what is it with these 'subscription fees' ? Ok, $99, actually $100 with a haircut, is not so terrible an amount, but is the value there? Seems like they would get more mileage out of this thing if they didn't charge an annual fee and just let folks work together.

Re:Why a subscription fee?

Since Microsoft won't be getting a cut of the games in question, and developer goodwill isn't exactly something they've had trouble getting behind the 360, what exactly would they get from just opening up the development platform?

I believe they were charing significantly more for the full scale developers kit/package which companies like EA Sports and such buy into. This makes a "tinkering/homebrew" entry point into that arena for what is only the cost of a couple games.

Re:Why a subscription fee?

Or maybe it's to help recoup their losses on the 360 sales, while XP is profitable already.

If I had to pick one reason, that would be my guess... homebrew software on the Xbox 1 was pretty popular, we've been reading all sorts of articles about Bill Gates wanting to "engage" those people. Also the argument against the use of modchips for homebrew is that it breaks Microsoft's profit model where they loose money on the hardware and recoup it on the software and accessories. Obviously people useing free homebrew instead of buying official MS licensed games is only helping MS loose more money.

By charging a subscription fee you can have your cake and eat it too. Garage developers can make AND RUN their homebrew software for a fairly low cost $100 really isn't that much, and the subscription fee lets MS allow that kind of development without breaking their profit model, essentially making up the money they're "loosing" by not selling you games.

while it might be a bit more expensive then chipping your console a lot of people will opt for the legal route if available. Not to mention I can see a whole lot of non-developers signing up just to run the homebrew stuff made by the real developers. I'll tell you what, if they make an XBMC360 and it's availble on this thing, I'll pay the $100 a year to run that and other software, weather I'm developing my own software or not. I would imagine there will be a lot of other people in the same boat. MS basically found a way to allow homebrew software and turn a profit at the same time... crafty buggers.

Re:Why a subscription fee?

Companies tend to have these low-cost barriers to entry simply to keep every random person with a game idea from throwing stuff onto their development site. In addition, if it's free, one is more likely to sign up, piddle around and then never create anything. At least with a small entry fee there is a slight financial incentive for you to actually go through with creating and deploying something. To me, $99 is nothing, but it seems like this is targeted at younger kids in their late teens/early twenties. Depending on your family's financial background, $99 is a lot of money to a student with little to no income stream and will ensure that you at least have a vested interest in their program.

Weight Watchers (the only example I can think of right now) has the same principle. They charge you $10-12 a week for their program whether you attend or not. They don't really do anything but weigh you and give you some rah-rah speeches to keep you motivated. The financial cost is there because, psychologically, people who have a vested financial interest in something tend to follow through with it more often and more completely.

Killer Feature

This could be a killer feature.

There's so many extremely simple games that are insanely fun multiplayer, and will probably never, ever be released as stand-alone games.

I'm still praying the Nintendo Wii will be opened up like this, but if it isn't, this might be what tips me over to XBOX 360. Programming for the Wii-controllers would be fun though, and I really, really want to play Pong with them :).

Re:Killer Feature

Well, the good news, is that the Nintendo Wii Dev Kit [digitalbattle.com] will cost somewhere around $1700. That's not too bad a price, considering the PS3 kit is rumoured to cost between $30,000 and $50,000. I'm not sure how much the full dev kit on the XBox 360 goes for. I think this could open up a lot of possiblities for the Wii. You get the full dev kit for under $2000. Not some rinky dink homebrew version, the whole thing. At this price, there could be WiiNux before we know it. And it would probably sell if it offered good multimedia functionality to the Wii, such as playing downloaded movies, and Linux games. Although I don't think Nintendo would let that fly, as people would just install an emulator, and play the Old NES games for free instead of paying for them.

Re:Killer Feature

1) Nintendo's not just going to give a dev kit to every random Joe who asks for one. You're either going to have to be an established game company, or have an agreement with a decently big publisher before you're added to the list.

2) Even if Nintendo does give you a dev kit, that doesn't mean you'll be able to release games for their system. All consoles have a logo program, and games that aren't vetted and approved can't be run. That's not to say it'll be trivial for you to get Microsoft to approve your game, but at least Microsoft is out there assuring people that it'll happen.

3) $1700 vs. $99/year. If you're paying $1700 for something, you're basically already a full-time game developer. $99/year is cheap enough so that Microsoft is going to have tons and tons of people on their kit, and they'll be able to pick and choose the best from the lot. Plus, you can start development of your game for free... the $99 is just for access to more documentation and Xbox portability. You can develop and release you PC version for free, THEN decide to pay $99 to port to Xbox and try to get it on Live.

4) Isn't it telling that every time Microsoft announces something truly innovative and, frankly, pretty damn refreshing, there has to be a counter-post saying that Nintendo has the same thing... even if they don't? I love Slashdot. Give credit where credit is due... this is a great move on Microsoft's part, and a win-win for every gamer out there.

Fragmenting the community.

If this is anything like the UT2004 'Make Something Unreal' its quite possible that this is going to fragment the playing community into small non-viable sub-communities.

E.g. Alien Swarm has about 4 decent servers, and a community of 100 players.

Well color me impressed...

But this seems like a good idea in many ways. I'm a bit taken aback that MicroSoft is doing something to let hobbists flex their creative muscle, especially in such a (relatively) open way. I mean, development for X-Box and PC? That's a pretty sweet deal.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure a lot of the games will probably suck eggs, but it might just turn out that we'd see some real innovation in design and concept with an infusion of fresh development blood. Because you never know, one of those hobbists/indie designers might crank out something good enough to either a) get picked up by an existing studio or b) generate enough interest from others to start up their own studio. Then it just becomes a matter of being a good enough businessman to keep things working.

Re:Well color me impressed...

I think this is fantastic news, if only because it offers a cool and enticing way into programming for the younger generation (shit that makes me sound old ...)

If you interview a random sample of programmers in the world today I bet a lot of the 25-30 aged ones will have got started by writing cheesy games as kids for their {Commodore 64/Sinclair Spectrum/BBC Micro}, even if they then went into corporate software, operating systems, embedded work or whatever. Learning to write software by doing databases in Visual Basic is boring. Learning to write software by doing cool games you can add multiplayer to and beat your friends at is a much better proposition.

Wasn't the head of Nintendo saying that it's a shame games are no longer feasable for hobbyists and entry level studios? It's surprising Microsoft beat them to it, but then Visual Studio Express was designed for the home/hobbyist developer as well if I remember correctly so maybe not too surprising. Here's hoping it becomes a trend and the next generation of coders are learning threading by actually doing it, instead of memorizing lecture slides.

next step

Now, someone please extract the binary signing key from this "XNA Game Studio Express".

Anyone know what's included?

Not found any details on what this kit actually includes yet. Surely to some extent the kit already exists via the free Visual Studio 2005 Express and the DirectX SDK? Apart from perhaps extra documentation and maybe some base framework for building for the 360. Is it going to be much more than just that?

Developers, Developers, Developers

Developers, Developers, Developers.

XNA & Your Rights

The XNA [microsoft.com] site they have a FAQ [microsoft.com] that doesn't really address my big question: If you create a game using XNA and distribute it to the community, who owns it? Are you forced into a licensing agreement? If so, is it one closer to the GPL or Microsoft's? This is very interesting because Microsoft may be claiming publishing rights to these games in the TOS for XNA.

So it could be a standard American Idol style:
1) trick contestants into signing away all rights they have to their work
2) let the community decide who is the best
3) publish their work and profit!

If you have preliminary questions about the XBox 360, you can find it on their forums [microsoft.com].

Re:XNA & Your Rights

The BBC article about this quotes Microsoft executive Peter Moore as saying:

Microsoft would regulate the content for appropriateness and intellectual property issues, but users would own their work, Mr Moore said.

It definitely looks like 1 is not the case, and given that he also says "I'd love to send a royalty cheque to a kid" 3 could well be it.

Andrew

this is going to boost their sales

until now only studios that payed a high fee were able to program the consoles. The introduction of the Linux Development Kit for the PS2 (http://playstation2-linux.com/ [playstation2-linux.com]) was nice, but too restrictive for sharing your productions. Now everyone will have, at last, access to the hardware. And I'm sure people will not only develop games. Sony (and Nintendo) better counterattack to this, or they are going to loose quite a big chunk of market share.

Sounds cool

I have a few gimmick games that I'd like to release for a console, like MMOPONG, or a MMO Castle Builder.

$99 a year?

indie developers and students

They're kidding, right? $99 to develop a game that only a handful of people might play, and as a student having no income. You could get a job though to pay the fee, but when would you have time to code? And what happens if you develop the next Geometry Wars? Do you own the rights to have it published or will Microsoft just pay you royalties (that probably wouldn't make you back your $99 either).

Here's a suggestion, set up a page on My Space with a link to, say, a File Planet for the binaries.

I'd never subject Blob and Conquer to this.

How fun!

What a great educational tool! What got me into programming was a kid was the fact that I could make games very similar in quality to my Atari games on our old 386. I wonder if they'll offer an API simple enough for beginners to pick up.

~Ben

Good 'ol game designer

Reminds me of things like HURG: http://www.nonowt.com/magfold/revsfol/hurg.html [nonowt.com]

That was good fun in the day, would get a simple game going without much programming. Although I mostly found programming more fun than playing....

Impressed

Am really impressed by this cool move from the Redmond's boys, but got a lot of questions over it. How will it bypass the anti-copy game protection? Will it be a true SDK with full access to all the key components or a crippled down OS with no ability to get the juice from the optical disk nor 3D CPUs like the SONY's attempt with the ps2 [wikipedia.org]?

--
Superb hosting [tinyurl.com] 20GB Storage, 1_TB_ bandwidth, php, mysql, ssh, $7.95

Potential

Does this open the pathway to the first home-brew gaming console viruses?

Totally Off-topic

Frontpage was filled with a huge Slashdot broadband advertisement. Maybe it's time to have slashdot.org redirect to slashdot .com i.s.o the other way.... ;-)

Let me get this straight

Instead of paying additional XBOX game developers a salary, MS is going to ask XBOX developers to pay *them*?
Brilliant. I'm going to start a company right away, and I'll make sure to hire lots of developers to pay me.

Homebrew & Backups & ... Linux :)

Well, I don't fully understand if you can just buy a developer kit and make an application to the XBOX 360, but doesn't this mean that it will become very easy to run homebrew and backups in the XBOX 360?

Even if the code is digitally signed to the creator and Microsoft enforces him not to create these kind of applications, just look at what happened to the PSP, there were a bug in the PSP was exploited to make a patch to downgrade the firmware until a firmware that Sony itself had made with a nasty (or very nice ... depends on your perspective) bug that allowed to run any application.

Now, you could just make a game and even without intention, that game could have a bug that could be exploited the same way on the XBOX 360 and really Microsoft couldn' prosecute someone just because that person is a bad coder an opened an exploit to the XBOX 360.

Who says Slashdot always bashes Microsoft?

The comments in this thread show that, when MS does something good, Slashdot (with the exception of a few idiots) heaps on the praise.

Lets take bets...

... on how long it will take someone to make a program that wrecks 360s.

Alterior motives?

I don't keep up with XBox360 game development but is this a subtle hint by Microsoft to get more developerment on the Xbox360? Seriously, I don't know. I can see this as a tactic.
"If you don't develop more games, someone else will . . . maybe the gamers. And we'll get their games and their money. And your little dog, too!"

I can finally do that game about the sassy robot!!

Finally, my dream of designing a mediocre videogame is about to come true!

-Eric

Painful distribution....

From the XNA FAQ:

Q: How exactly can I share my 360 game to other 360 users? Will my game only be available to people with the XNA "Creators Club" subscription? Will it be available to all 360 users that have an Xbox Live account?
A: There is currently no supported way to share binaries on the Xbox 360. Currently, there are four requirements that must be met in order to share a game targeting Xbox 360 which is developed with XNA Game Studio Express.

      1. The individual you are planning to share the game with must be logged in to Xbox Live and have an active subscription to the XNA Creators Club
      2. The receiving user must have downloaded the XNA Framework runtime environment for the Xbox 360
      3. The receiving user must have XNA Game Studio Express installed on their own development PC
      4. The game project, including all source and content assets, must be shared with the receiving user. The receiving user then compiles and deploys the game to their Xbox 360.

Doesnt exactly sound like a barrel of laughs to distribute to friends etc...

Another take on the situation

Isn't it feasible that they have released this feature to try and kill the "I modded my XBox to make and play homebrew games" argument? I remember reading a while back that somebody once showed Bill Gates a modded XBox, with a couple homebrew games, a few emulators, and XBox Media Center on it, and his response was something along the lines of "how can we leverage this idea into future products?" Apparently, now they have.

Great move.

This is really great, I might just use my PS3 savings for 360 if Sony won't follow through. I can just see indie companies coming with great innovative games competing the big publishers driving more innovation or atleast cost down. Them, plus a handful of those angelic-selfless coders contributing to the community with free games. Even ad-supported games will be more feasible - created by the corporations for promotions, etc. One problem 360 might face though is when companies would go after Microsoft about widespread copyright infringement brought upon the many spin-offs/rip-offs of games, or even using trademark characters of big publishers games etc.. Like say if I create a game called 'final fantasy 7 - new world' and use ff7 characters etc, and distribute it freely. Will I be facing square-enix lawyers the next day? And if this becomes rampant, will square-enix lawyers go after Microsoft. Anyways, I think Sony is in trouble.

Some good can come of this

The immediate thought is to make a wrapper to run linux or signed code or maybe a bootloader to run commercial copied games (as if you can't already do that). But, you will probably be running your game on top of an existing MS environment instead of straight on the CPU like a commercial game. Still, such an engine would be quite complex, and as sure as we know Microsoft, there are bound to be many corner cases or unchecked buffers. This makes another fairly accessible product in which a flaw can be found which can be used to run native unsigned code. Maybe... one can always hope.

Bold Move

With apologies to Ford, Microsoft is making a pretty bold move by essentially embracing the homebrew community. Some may not want to pay the $99 bucks to be able to share their games, but this sure beats the heck out of the constant arms race that is usually waged between console makers and people want to run homebrew or pirated software. One could also argue though, that this is a desperate move by Microsoft to spur more Xbox 360 development. But given that Microsoft on the whole has always been developer friendly and makes some of the best development tools in the business (at least for Microsoft platforms), I suspect that this was always a part of their plan. For me personally, this is a dream come true! I've always wanted the chance to write something for a console, but the price in money, for professional kits, or effort, for the homebrew console scene, has been too great. I've twiddled a bit on the PC, but consoles are where the real action is right now.

Microsoft still doesn't get it...

...Ever this attempt to 'be more open' is still closed minded. A f'in subscription fee? XP only game development? Microsoft, still trying to suck every dollar out of every possible area.

No subscription fee. Open the API and allow game development from any platform ( yes, even *nix ). Allow others to share the games, for free.

Heres where you make your money. If you want to sell your games, you need to buy a license to brand it as an Xbox game. Then they can still get their kickbacks, and the hobbyists don't have to sell their souls.

Re:Microsoft still doesn't get it...

One of the consequences of FOSS is that now everyone wants everything for free. God forbid you pay for a library! What's with the sense of entitlement here?

MS has a brand image to keep with the Xbox. To allow unfettered distribution of homebrew is a disaster. Remember that there are certain types of content that MS would rather keep off Xboxes, even if it wasn't authorized or endorsed by MS. Adult games, games featuring direct explicit illegalities... knowing the internet and YouTube, we have an immense ability to create content that the Xbox brand does NOT want to be associated with. There is absolutely nothing wrong with MS wanting control of distribution, if only for this purpose alone.

So the idea will be to put a crutch on homebrew distribution, so that MS can pick the cream of the crop for official endorsement, and probably un-handicap the game for full XBLA distribution, free or otherwise. This will allow you and your buddies to have fun throwing pr0n and other shenanigans on the Xbox360, but disallow you from doing any real damage through mass distribution.

And what's with the "XP only" game development? It's the .NET Framework for cryin' out loud. *AND* it's Managed DirectX! This concerns Linux/UNIX zealots none. We're not talking about a C++ library for OpenGL here, this thing simply *cannot* run in 'nix. The Xbox360 runs DX only, and one of the concepts here is getting rid of complex C++ and throwing in simpler C#, none of these quite fit with 'nix eh (Mono doesn't count)?

Do you seriously think MS is intending on sucking $100/year out of every developer? Are you seriously believing that MS intends the subscription fee to be a profitable industry? There won't be enough devs out there for this to be anything but a drop in the bucket to MS. I suspect the fee is more of a barrier to entry requirement to keep your everyday kids out and encourage some serious development - without setting the price as high as to keep interested (and qualified) parties out.

Hmmm

Really looking forward to playing Xbox Media Center on a 360. The only real intellectual property problems with the original is it was only legal if you already had the compiler, which pretty much nobody had. But would I pay $100 a year for XBMC on a 360? Maybe, depends on how Sony handles the PS3 homebrew development.

Just when my contempt for MS was at its peak...

...they go and do something cool like this. Hope its not crippled somehow...

And...

One of the nice things about this is that you shouldn't even _need_ a 360 to do initial development on. A moderately good gaming PC and a wired 360 controller ought to tide you over until you've decided whether it's time to pony up the $99 fee (eg, game is finished, time to optimize for the 360).

I think this is an absolutely phenomenal idea, and I'm very excited about doing some hobbyist development with it.

About the 99$ fee.

The way I see it, there is nothing preventing me from learning about best practices on developing for the 360, then making my game for the PC with complete 360 controller support and then when my game is done, then I can buy into this program to compile it on the 360 and debug from there. You don't have to develop the thing for the 360 exclusively. 99$ a year is cheap when Sony charges you 50K and Nintendo 2K for a development system. And last time I heard, the Linux kit for thePS2 had dreadfull support. On the other hand, what Microsoft is releasing is a free version of what the devs uses. There is going to be great support for this.

I can't wait to download it!

Ohhhh so thats what too so long.

I should have figured this but.....
Thats what took them so long to release dev tools... they just needed to figure out how to price it.

you haters are incredible. this is GREAT news.

why all the hate?

did you guys say "oh great now we can have shitty mods" when the iD guys gave access to the WAD files?

How about when Valve let people have access to the half-life engine? Isn't counterstrike still the most played online game? I'm willing to bet that a serious portion of the half life cds have been sold just to play counterstrick.

What happened to the guys who made the Desert Combat mod for BF1942? Oh yeah, they got hired by the company and improved the game.

Look at the success of Xbox Live Arcade. You have a plethora of PC game developers making games and selling them on the Xbox system. These are all guys who could never make console games in the past.

MS made a bunch of tools to help developers make their PC games work on 360 and vice versa.

So now MS wants to let even more people in, and you guys bitch about it? Why because you have to pay $99? or because some kid will make a donkey kong clone with steve jobs and bill gates? or because you have to have a 360?

I'm willing to bet that some kick ass games come out as a result of this. Maybe some kid gets hired by a company and makes a truly kick ass game like Geometry Wars. Maybe some game comes out and gets noticed and picked up for Arcade. Who knows.

If you dont want to do it, keep the $99 in your pocket. But only good stuff can come out of this.

.Net Only

According to http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?Pos tID=633584&SiteID=1 [microsoft.com], you're forced to use .NET, no C/C++ allowed. Now they're forcing the amateurs to use .NET, since the pros don't do it.

For those wondering ...

From the Microsoft XNA FAQ:

Q: What does XNA stand for?
A: XNA's Not Acronymed

It seems this is what Microsoft said that they were learning to embrace open source software!

My first title

I was thinking about a Jackie-Chan style... use your environment to destroy your foes kind of game, aptly titled "house of flying chairs".

Thanks,
Leabre

Funny

In addition, by joining a "creators club" for an annual subscription fee of $99, users will be able to build, test and share their games on Xbox 360, as well as access a wealth of materials to help speed the game development progress.

So let me get this straight.

Homebrew Developers are supposed to pay Microsoft for the priveledge of making new content for their system that will be given away for free but that Microsoft can claim when they list the number of titles available on their platform when they advertise to compete with the PS3?

I suppose that $99.00 per year is better than Sony is going to charge to develop for the PS3, but I don't think that this is any real reason to celebrate.

LK

In-Game Advertising

Does anyone else see the fact that Microsoft much like with Google's adsense with web developers, could capitalize off of game creators with advertising? Microsoft could implement their in-game advertising into this program, giving developers a small cut; which in the end means more money (for Microsoft and the developer), and more developer motivation. I think such a move could spell a tremendous new outlook to small game developement. Does anyone else see the same happening?

Linux isn't possible, stop dreaming

Even if Microsoft wanted to, Linux is not possible on the Xbox 360, at least without a new version of the hardware.

On the 360, the page table is managed by a hypervisor etched into ROM inside the CPU. A page is never marked as executable unless it has passed an RSA signature check. The kernel does not have the authority to mark a page as executable.

Sure, you could get the Linux kernel running, but how would you get bash, gcc, perl, ls, cp, ....... working without also signing them?

Microsoft's FAQ talks about C# only. Gee, what a surprise. I think this means that the dynamic recompiler is inside the hypervisor, since it can't be anywhere else. You can bet that all programs will have to be verifiable. Otherwise, exploits ahoy.

Melissa

boothbabes

And they had boothbabes at the gamefest party!!! I mean what more could you want of a game development framework??

Re:Yaroze

hmmmmmm... waffles

Re:mod chips?

There's still a legitimate requirement t back up games you've bought, to cover the possibility of damaged disks. Some are claiming that the 360 frequently damages disks, although it seems to be greatly exaggerated. An MS policy of replacing damaged disks at a nominal or zero fee would eliminate the backup requirement as well though.

There will remain the requirement to hack the box just to see if it can be done though ...

Re:Microsoft Can't Be Serious

OK, i'm sick of this "PS3 has Linux and you can code out of the box!1!"

It isn't true.

Yes, the PS3 "runs" linux.

Embedded Linux.

You will never 'see' it. You will see a nice shiny PSP style XMB menu. You will not be able to
code a damn thing (legitimatly). Sony has never once said you would be able to. Stop spreading
old shot down rumors.

Re:Yaroze

Yaroze was neither the only nor the first 'consumer' console dev kit, Develo from NEC and WonderWitch from Bandai predates it ( just to name a few ). All those "Microsoft/Apple/Linux/Whatever is a copycat!" stories are getting very old very fast ... Check you're facts first ... ohh right, you don't have Wikipedia at Troll U =/

Re:mod chips?

Show the 360 users a 360MC for the 360 that can play the media formats XBMC can play (i.e. all the stuff that microsoft cant or wont touch) and maybe they will give up trying to make a mod chip.
Oh and there needs to be MAME360 and MESS260 too to cover the emulation side (and with the power of the 360 CPUs you could certainly emulate anything with 8 and 16 bit CPUs including things like Neo-Geo and CPS2 that required too much memory and CPU for the original XBOX and probably a number of games using 32 bit CPUs too)

Provide those few apps in a way that doesnt require spending big bucks to play them and a sizable chunk of the "I want a mod chip to run homebrew code" market would be satisfied.

User created games, or just textures?

Nintendo ... has already announced that they will be allowing user generated content for the Virtual Console.

Clothing in Animal Crossing and emblems in Mario Kart don't count.