Microsoft Publishes Free XBox Development Tools

prostoalex writes "Microsoft announced the release of free XNA Game Studio Express tools for developing C# games that run on both Windows and XBox. They're also selling XNA Creators Club subscriptions, which, similar to MSDN subscriptions, offer access to sample code and additional documentation. Also, Microsoft is explicitly aiming towards uniting the Windows and XBox development platforms: 'You will have to compile the game once for each platform. In this release simply create a separate project for each platform and then compile them both. Our goal is to allow as much code as possible to be shared between those two projects, allowing you to use the same source files in both projects, but platform-specific code will need to be conditionally-compiled.'"

Not quite free....

If you want to run the games on your own xbox, you need the "Creators Club" subscription...which costs $100/year.

So it's not quite free. And you can't distribute the games to others....unless you distribute the source and they are also members of the creator's club.

Re:Not quite free....

It's a lot cheaper than a Gamecube, Wii, PS2, or PS3 dev kit. This is a major step forward. Indie developers can use it, even if it is $100 (which, let's face it, is not much money...two games worth) and if they create something worthwhile they can pay more to get it full licenced for release.

Re:Not quite free....

The ps2 linux kit had device drivers instead of direct access to the graphics hardware, which made it useless for developing competitive console games.

Not QUITE informative- not really even correct.

Even in the X-Box, you're talking to device drivers, not the hardware directly. That IS what you do with DirectX- it's call that because it bypassed many of the software layers in Windows so you could write games. That's supposed to be the big selling point of the X-Box lines is that you can write for XP and do a minimal amount of work to make a console port to the X-Box or X-Box360. Talking to the hardware directly means poking values into the registers on the GPU, etc. Something few of the developers do- and none on the X-Box/X-Box 360 They typically go through a library or device driver on all the consoles to begin with. You might have done development under a console target, so your mileage may vary- but what I know of things differs from what you just said by a lot.

Here's the free code

freecode.c

#include "creatorsclub.h"

Re:Not quite free....

Way to fail to own it. They gave you something free (yes, there are caveats) or at worst dirt-cheap, that others sell for much more. You can now choose -- your wallet or your "must-irrationaly-hate-ms" reflex?

God help you if the indians get close to you with a few "gimme" rounds of texas hold'em. You'll never break free.

...you see where I'm going with this?

it's almost like this truly vicious practice that many shareware vendors have (wolves in sheeps clothing, these guys). They offer you up a fantastic game as a trial version and then ask you to pay for it if you love it.

bastards.

I can imagine that Sony and Nintendo are none to amused at this, so I'll just sit back and wait for them to file antitrust complaints.

...yeah. but it's MS that stifles innovation. What antitrust issue do you see here? The 2nd place player in a field tries to gain an advantage by giving things away... I'd come up with an analogy but they seem to obvious. I'll let you run with it.

Re:Not quite free....

The only reason behind the $100 charge per year is the same reason they charge for approving drivers, or they charge for Xbox Live:

To keep the riff-raff out.

If you're paying $100 a year, you're likely a responsible enough adult that you'll not constantly submit Xbox Live Arcade games that completely suck, have no chance at being published, and waste a lot of Microsoft's time. (They charge for driver certification so they driver makers don't start using Microsoft as a free QA service. Similar concept. They charge for Xbox Live subscriptions so assholes don't make 30 of them to dodge bans.)

It's a valid practice. $100 a year is NOTHING to anybody actually interested in game development, the only one is hurts are little kids who would produce crap games anyway. (And even THEN, they can produce as many crap games on PC as they want; the $100 only applies if you want to run it on an Xbox.)

I like the insane leaps of logic required to make giving free dev tools away to the public look like a bad thing. While you're making up anti-Microsoft bullshit, remember that releasing stuff like this is what is going to give Microsoft a huge lead in console gaming and leave Sony in the dust.

Creator's Club

The press release says that they're working on removing the Creator's Club requirement for playing XNA games.

The reason you need to be a member of the Creator's Club as of now is because of the XNA framework - a souped-up version of the .NET framework - that your games are built on top of. Your games won't run without it, which means anyone who wants to run your game needs it (i.e., be a member of the Creator's Club.)

Creator's club not necessary to use XNA

The Creator's Club is only necessary if you want the extra content/samples/support or if you want to run XNA games on an Xbox 360 (for now you'll have to have a Creator's Club membership even if you only want to run others' code, but that should change in a future release). If you just want to build Windows games using XNA then there's no reason to get a Creator's Club subscription.

Is it just me...

Is it just me, or would this speed up the development of Linux on the XBox 360?

Xbox 360 only

Those of us who haven't upgraded should note that this is only for the 360, not the regular Xbox.

So I make a vijeo game for XBOX360

Who's gonna publish my game after I make it?

Burger King !

Just find a way to murderlize the King and they'll sell it for $3.99 with a meal

SNES

I would love to see Nintendo do something like this. I think allowing development using the SNES dev kit would allow those who want to get into console game development somewhere to start, yet not compromise what they are charging for their professional kit.

Re:SNES

Not exactelly. Here's more wikitrivia for you: the CPU of the SNES was a Ricoh 5A22, which was based on the CMD/GTE 65c816, itself a version of the WDC 65C816. Now, the WDC 65816 was also the CPU of the Apple IIGS, and that is why the Apple IIGS was used as an early SNES devkit. Also, some SNES games had a built-in processor, the Nintendo SA-1, which was also based on the 65816.

Re:SNES

Hmm, thought I'd hit submit, but the post disappeared.

Aaanyway. Nintendo has done you one better by providing Flash support in the Opera browser included in every Wii. That means that you can play games developed in Flash on your Wii using the Wiimote.

Opera is already installed on every Wii (it's used to power the Wii Shop Channel), but to access other websites you have to use DNS redirection hacks... Once Opera is properly "released" you'll be able to use it freely. Meanwhile, wiicade.com [wiicade.com] is a website dedicated to developing/promoting Flash games explicitly designed to be played on the Wii.

Channel 9 Demo

This video on Channel9 shows off running a game on the Xbox. Pretty cool stuff.
http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=2612 54 [msdn.com]

Non commercial

It strictly allows only non commercial development and no distribution including free over the net. There's is another commercial version that'll be released early next year but you still face the Microsoft bottle neck. You can't release commercial games unless they approve of them and take a health chunk of the profits. It'll allow you to develope for the Xbox 360 at a much lower risk but there are no guarentees you'll be able to release the game on Xbox 360. Microsoft still retains the final approval and demands their pound 'O fleash.

Re:Non commercial

A lot of people are going "holy cow! xbox programming! yay!" and ignoring that they're giving us tools that have existed in the pc world for decades. Microsoft isn't giving anyone anything.. they're seeing how much we'll pay for what we can get for free.

There are two possible answers to this:

1. When was the last time a company gave you a very inexpensive way to develop games for a console system? The last I can think of was Sony's Net Yaroze [wikipedia.org] (essentially a limited PS1 dev kit), but that was quite a bit more expensive than XNA currently is (at $100/year, it'll take 7.5 years for a Creator's Club subscription to equal the cost of a Net Yaroze). PS2 Linux doesn't count as it was seriously hindered in its capabilities, and PS3 Linux won't count until you can fully utilize the GPU. GBADev [gbadev.org] and DSDev [dsdev.org] don't count because they're not official development tools provided by Nintendo and rely on hacks to allow you to run your code on the handhelds directly.
2. What other frameworks allow you to build games for both PC (windows) and console (xbox 360) at the same time (there are a few minor differences you need to take into account, but if you write a game for Windows using XNA it's mostly trivial to re-build that for 360, with maybe a few shader tweaks here and there)? Do those frameworks allow you to load your game onto the console in a "legal" (non-modchip, non-hack) way? A framework like Torque doesn't count becase you still have to be able to get a 360 dev kit to be able to run your game (dev kits cost upwards of $10K, and getting one requires you to jump through a bunch of hoops proving that you're a competent software developer with a high likelihood of actually being able to ship your game in a timely manner among many other things).

That tools like this have existed on the PC for a while is a red herring, because tools like this for consoles generally have not. If you want to stick with PC development, that's fine, but it's orthogonal to the discussion at hand.

yeehaw! I'm gonna write me a program!

I'll get right on working on a version of Open Office that runs on the Xbox :-D Then I can use that incredibly fast direction pad to type my documents. Ooh and I could bring in my Xbox for powerpoint presentations at school and have some fun when I'm not using it for that! The possibilities are endless! You may think that's a dumb idea but have you looked at the public domain roms made from scratch by people in their basements for earlier consoles like SNES, Genesis, and N64? THEY SUCK! Regular people aren't very good at console programming I guess. Office it is! :-D

Sample code with XNA: Madelbrot at 60fps

Here is some interesting code, using C# and the pixel shader which draws fractals 60 times a second [msdn.com] using the XBox GPU. Initially I was skeptical about coding games with managed code (like C#), but it looks like we will see some games written in .Net. The drawing underneath still gets done natively, but you will be insulated to some extent.

Interestingly, Mono is planning to bring XNA to other platforms [taoframework.com]. Hopefully we will see PS3 running XNA sometime soon (quite possible, since PS3 already runs Mono).

Take that Stallman!

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

Seems even the Evil Empire has a sense of humour.

XNA is not bad

I come from a low level graphics programming background. Having played around with the XNA betas that have been out for a while, I must say that XNA is probably the easiest way to get an amateur started with DirectX programming and game development. It seems almost like Microsoft is trying to get the grass roots hooked onto the platform so that the next generation of game programmers prefer the MS platform.

Oh, and people who compare XNA to game engines like Ogre are missing the point. XNA is not a game engine, it's more of a development tool/platform. It does come with lots of library code, but it's not a full-fledged game engine.

Re:XNA is not bad

I attended the XNA Open House [msdn.com] this evening. The first demo consisted of downloading a model from TurboSquid [turbosquid.com], adding it to a XNA Game project, writing about 15 lines of code ... and boom -- there was a rendered ship that was lit, spining and was controlable by the 360 controller. Ridiculously easy.

The entry barrier has been lowered significant. I forsee alot people taking advantage of this platform.

Very low level API

Don't think this is a game engine or anything, this is very close to being a wrapper around Direct X, execpt missing alot of features of DirectX including most of DirectInput. It's ok for making Xbox360 games, but there are MUCH MUCH better toolkits for free for PC development then XNA.

is XNA worth the bits it's made of?

It's nice that XNA is free as long as you only care about the PC... but Microsoft was already giving us free PC programming tools. I'd be curious if someone who actually knows this stuff can tell me if using XNA to develop for the PC is any better than the free SDK's and what not that was out there before?

Developers, developers, developers!

I think that the "Developers" chair-throwing speech is exactly why MS is #1. Other companies (especially OSS companies) need to get just as excited about supporting developers if they want anywhere near that kind of success.

Sony tried that 10 years ago

Sony did this with the yaroze [wikipedia.org] play station, 10 years ago. In my opinion it failed miserably because the conflicting goals of having a closed platform and a community of people developing for it.

I have lost interest in game consoles since then so i don't know how the PS2 w/linux did. Does anyone know?

Using Other Developers To Profit

The one thing that Microsoft does extremely well is document and provide tools to develop software for windows.(free tools such as visual c# express offer non-commercial developers a cheap IDE). It's why there is a much larger number of applications written for windows than for Unix like systems.

By applying the same principles to the Xbox 360 they might just find that more people use the system because of what they can do with it, not because of the numbers.

The applications make the system useful, not the other way around.

Ohh the potential for MMORPGs

I can see how this would be a great way to bridge the gap between PC and Console games. The game that I'd really like to see the light of day is Shadowrun Online. A game like that has enough variation in character archtypes and abilities that you could easily break it out across multiple platforms. Although characters like mages and shamans might require a pretty keyboard intensive interface, some of the more simple characters likes street samurai's and physical adepts could be controlled with a gamepad interface and probably not need more than 4-6 buttons. A gamepad with a joystick would be a great boon to anyone who wanted to play a rigger, or anyone else who is involved with vehicles. Another game that I am looking forward to that is already in development is APB by Webzen games. They are using the Unreal 3 engine and claim to be developing for the Xbox and PC. It is advertised as being a GTA like game, and as much as people might poo-poo GTA, everyone I know who has been into games since the days of Gunship and F15 Strike Eagle (RIP Microprose) has been wanting a massive online version of a game like GTA. It is the kind of game that we grew up dreaming about, and it is finally coming close to reality a good 20+ years later.

appropriation of participatory culture.

Microsoft is positioning themselves to capitalize on the participation & creativity of their user-base. Being a producer is the new consumer v2.0 ;)

We can see this transformation across corporate culture with the flood of web 2.0 software and services. It simply far more profitable to have your consumers produce the content that you service that it is to make content your self. This also shapes the traditional big budget game productions look at what EA is trying to do with Spore or the popularity of EverQuest like MMORPGs where participants produce experiences with each other under the domain of corporate context provider. These experiences are enriched by this appropriation and therefore accumulate social capital, and whats important to remember about capital is that is transferable.

Its only logical that microsoft will try to capitalize on the home-brew game community. When those high up in the corporate hierarchy were shown a moded xbox and the home-brew software library, their question was not how do we stomp this out rather it was how do we appropriate this into our business model.

The tragedy of corporate appropriation is the tendency to make things suck. For example by shifting around generated social capital (ie your coolness becomes our brand) Your youtube videos are 1.6 billion for a few people at the top and free hosting for those at the bottom.

As the service model integrates the qualities/coolness of free & user generated software with open APIs, customizable interfaces and in this case low cost "development kits", the qualities that made free software so desirable are appropriated and generally potentially crippled as generated social capital is siphoned off to disproportionately support the (relatively minor) contributions of a few at the top.

So we see the rise of free service models wikipedia, creative commons, participatory culture foundation, the linux platform etc. (they are still appropriated and ofcourse people profit disproportionate to their contributions but at least there are some structural qualities in place that limit the disproportional profitability such as the GPL, open platforms, copyleft etc. We should probably chose to participate in those spaces if possible or given circumstance and specific goals you decide to make content for microsoft/google/sony, that fine as long as you think about it first ;)

Torque X

It's just hours old:
http://www.garagegames.com/products/torque/x/ [garagegames.com]

If you already have a Torque Game Builder license, you can also use Torque X to make games
for the Xbox 360. I just discovered the release, so I dunno how similar this will be to TGB,
but they use the same scripting language for all their products. I'm guessing only some minor
porting is needed, and that gives you four platforms to make games for (Mac, Linux, Windows, 360).

This is actually not that bad

Although I personally am not interested in this, I know lots of other people are.
I dont see the "you need to buy the subscription thing to play games on your 360" or the "you need to compile from source" or the "managed code only" as that serious.
To me, the 2 biggest lacks is:
C# only. No managed C++ or other languages.
and the real big one: Programs written for the XBOX 360 cannot communicate with the outside world at all (i.e. no networking period). This is by far the biggest limitation of XNA Game Studio 360 IMO.

An XNA community site

Since we're on the topic, I have a web site - www.threesixbox.com [threesixbox.com] - dedicated to XNA projects. It already has a good number of user-submitted projects for you to try out, many of which have the source code that you can study and learn from. Currently all the projects a PC-based, so you don't need to be a member of the Creator's Club to try them out.

Thoughts on microsoft's strategy

Ah...now its easier then ever for cross platform development on the PC and consoles. Looks like the unwelcome trend of PC game interfaces with gigantic picture icons, no tool tips, rigid control schemes and tacked-on-ish mouse support shall continue unabated.

Seriously, it sounds like this is an ok idea but the amount of restrictions seem to limit its potential. It appears to lower the barrier to entry...but does it really? It sounds like when you read the fine print they aren't really giving you much. I guess I can't blame them, they make their money on the games not the console...so if they started giving distribution rights away for free they would be screwing themselves.

Microsoft has been trying to have their cake and eat it too by making cross platform games for windows/PC easy. Games are the main thing that ties you average home user to the windows platform. They've kind of been eating themselves since they jumped into the console arena. Cross-platform is a way of saying to users "you still need windows for PC games!" while still growing their console end.

The trouble is, the PC has traditionally offered some advantages over the console in controls, community, etc. Perhaps advantages isn't the right word, rather differences. Most ported or even cross platform games feel like the PC support was stuck on as an afterthought these days, they have since the xbox came out. Its not a PC game...its a console game on your PC. Its only a matter of time before the PC gamers start just buying a xbox instead. And you can see that happening now, I hear a lot of people saying "its expensive upgrading my PC...I'm just going to buy an xbox360 or PS3 instead". Maybe thats what microsoft wants. But its also going to weaken their OS market because people are going to buy less new PCs and stay with their old ones longer.

We'll see how this strategy plays out in the end. Frankly, I think MS would have been better offering a console that was very different from the PC as a gaming platform to prevent dilution of that brand. But, they're a computer company so its not a surprise they stuck with what they knew. (The original xbox pretty much was just a PC anyway right?)

Why do you guys care about money so much?

If you guys are so concerned about the annual $100 fee, then just unplug your 360 controller, plug it into your pc, and make a windows game that supports your controller, SIMPLE! There is way more benefits to having it on PC like previously stated, and its nothing new. I see this as a way to try to make a name for yourself since M$ is holding a contest using XNA on the xbox for making a good game and getting it published.

XNA is a waste.

You might ask "why am I so anti-XNA"?

Well three reasons since you asked so nicely.

1. XNA allows you to build stuff for your PC for free, and pay 100 bucks a month for building for the 360? WOW! unless you care about the second half, ANY compiler allowed you to build stuff for your PC for Free. What's worse is unless a prospective employee has creators club (or wants to get it) they can't really see your work unless it's on the PC. So basically you're stuck.

Instead you can get Visual Studio with just DirectX and learn how to REALLY program, rather then relying on an enviroment. If XNA is easy to use, everyone will use it and there will be a lot of worthless demos. Companies want to see that you programmed, not that you did something easy.

2. C# is not a great programming language. Ok it has uses. However making games is NOT one of them. If you program for a console you're probably in C++ if you're not programming for a console you use what language you want. C# might make some stuff easier, but unless you know C++ you're not going to be a real asset to a company.

In addition C# is Microsoft's programming language. It's a bastard of C++ and Java, basically so Microsoft could own a language. Don't buy into it. Java and C++ are both good languages as well, I have heard of few jobs that want C# currently.

3. As people have mentioned to get access you need to pay 100 bucks a month then your friend has to pay 100 a month, then your other friend has to pay 100 a month. It's not a "cheap" development studio. A cheap development studio is your PC. Besides which unless you know how to do multi core processing (don't you DARE say you do unless you've done it and shipped a product, it's much harder then you realize) the 360 is going to be weaker then your PC. It's true you don't have a unified system, but even on the 360 you no longer have it with hard drives and non hard drives. In addition you have to submit to Microsoft's rules at times (mostly during production), which limits your freedom a little more.

This might be an option for some people but if you're doing professional grade work you will almost definatly have a dev kit. If you arn't it doesn't really matter because the work is the important part, not the final product so skip XNA and work on other stuff. The only person who needs XNA is the idiot who MUST program in C# and must program on the 360. Just remember anything you do in XNA will likely be only for the PC and 360, and not for any other console.

Microsoft is doing good positioning themselves, but if you look into their motives it's not for the fans. It's to improve their brands (C#, XNA, Xbox 360, DirectX). Unless you want to only support those brands you are better off moving on.

self-publishing?

Now, I don't claim to unerstand the terms of the XNA license, but I got the definite impression that you couldn't self-publish games either onto the marketplace or for free distribution - it has to be published through Microsoft.

You can't even share a game YOU wrote with a friend unless they also have a developer account, and even then, it has to be done over the XBL network.

So not only is this bad for developers who want to release their work for free or under their own license, but it forces you into a position of relying on Microsoft to publish your work regardless of your own wishes.

Am I simply misunderstanding something here, or is XNA really as idiotic as it looks to me?

Yawn

If these were "REAL" developers tools, they wouldn't only support interpreted byte code. I'm all for giving homebrewers training wheels like C#, but I can't get interested until they're offering full C++ support.

Re:Close, but no biscuit

They had me until the C# part.

Nice way to make sure you don't do a port to something else.

I think the DirectX part is more likely to restrict portability. C# can run on a lot of platforms, thanks to the mono team's work, you know?

It had to be said, Pt. 2

I for one welcome our new XNA developing overlords.