MSFT wants to distribute XNA games like YouTube

by Dustin Burg { Sep 13th 2007 at 11:45AM }

In an interview with develop magazine, general manager of Microsoft games Chris Satchell confirmed that Microsoft is still working hard to create a service similar to YouTube for XNA developers to distribute their games with the Xbox 360 community.

Since day one, Microsoft has openly talked about an Xbox 360 future where user created content and user created games would be shared and played across Xbox Live YouTube style, but nothing other than a paid yearly subscription to XNA has come to fruition. Satchell did sound optimistic in the interview going on to say that "we [Microsoft] need to provide people a stage to play on, a distribution medium so that they can show off their creativity to everyone. That's always been our vision and remains our vision". And we must say we agree with Satchell's optimistic vision. Talk about this YouTube style XNA has been floating around for ages, so let's get this service off the ground Microsoft and get motivated. We want to be able to see and play the gaming community's best work and be able to share (or possibly take over the world with) our uber secret X3F Goes to Space 4th person shooter that we've been diligently working on. When XNA YouTube goes live just be prepared guys ... be prepared.

Tags: microsoft, xna

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Kiz @ Sep 13th 2007 12:07PM

Yeah, whatever. I'd bet my console that when this finally gets going, MS will just so happen to forget one of the most important aspects of Youtube - it's free.

"Year access to the hottest new independent games from fresh developers - only $49.99 a year!"

Tony @ Sep 13th 2007 12:08PM

I hope it happens and it's really the best way for any group/publisher/developer/random guy to see how users will react to their products.

It also furthers, indirectly, the idea of getting mods and other things from PC users shared. It's kind of disheartening knowing that even Oblivion has all these cool user mods I'll never get to try.

Sunny @ Sep 13th 2007 12:25PM

This is similar to what the guys behind the Scratch programming language have going on.

http://scratch.mit.edu/

It would be really cool if Xbox had this, with a full front-end right on the dashboard. :)

3cubed minus 3squared plus1 @ Sep 13th 2007 12:26PM

My thoughts exactly.
They will find some way to charge people for this.

Mauricio @ Sep 13th 2007 12:35PM

hey tony, if you have a PC you can enjoy all your Oblivion Mods all day long.

Tony @ Sep 13th 2007 12:51PM

I have a 360 copy of the game, it doesn't exactly do me much good. I'm not buying it twice. I think that stuff should be available to console owners as well on some level, was my point lol.

TrustyBadger @ Sep 13th 2007 1:06PM

@Kiz, yep if it was delivered free ala YouTube, it'd cannibalize their lucrative Live Arcade business, and if there's one thing Microsoft has proven this generation, it is that they're not into freebies, hence the charging for low resolution bitmaps and rubbish wallpapers - which even if the publishers wanted to give away free, involves $$$ changing hands.

Michael Paul @ Sep 13th 2007 1:44PM

Microsoft seems afraid that we'll get free entertainment out of the 360, but on a hit-and-miss basis. No divx streaming, but feel free to convert those banned divx files to WMV.

If they would let me BUY the darn development kit but then let me do whatever I wanted with the games made from it until the 360 is obsolete, I'd use XNA. As it is, it's a bad joke that should be fixed or made to go away...

johnathon @ Sep 13th 2007 3:10PM

I just think its not really feasible. How many people know C+ and XNA [both are requirements for making a game]

I think whats really needed is a simple[r] programming lang that would really easy people into making their own games. The Youtube XNA thing would help as well.

I'm hoping MS isnt bullishing us.

[and i'm trying to learn XNA cuz I want to develop a couple of games...one maybe even geared to kids]

johnathon @ Sep 13th 2007 3:15PM

sorry...its C# you'd need

C+ might as well be required tho.

mfed3 @ Sep 13th 2007 3:46PM

ok.
some of you guys obviously dont know what you're talking about slash dont get the point of what Microsoft is doing here.

to make games, all you need is Microsoft Visual C# Express Edition (FREE), and XNA Game Studio Express (FREE). The language used is C#, which is an evolution of Java. XNA is in no way a lanaguage. It is a set of libraries added on to the default Microsoft libraries which give you access to all the directx calls.

XNA basically lets you get a game up in running in 10 minutes because the libraries they give you are so good. full mouse and keyboard/xbox 360 controller are supported right out of the box, as well as all the 3d model displaying and sound playing.

if anyone is a decent java/c++ programmer they can pick up C# in a few hours. its a really great language and is actually my language of choice right now, even over java.

now to clear some other things up. the only thing you pay for is the ability to port your games onto the xbox 360 to use its hardware instead of your own computer's. this ability is $100 for a year subscription, which is thousands of dollars cheaper than having to buy the actual dev kit.

This article is saying that Microsoft is trying to add a blade section to the xbox 360 that would allow any xbox live member to play the games that members of the $100 subscription posted online. Right now, the only way to play others' games is to pay the subscription, download someone's source code, and run that on their xbox 360.

allowing anyone to play posted games is the youtube idea that would definitely catch on and would be amazing. making it available to any xbox live gold subscriber definitely puts the icing on the cake and negates any negativity of having to pay for online play on xbox live.

Waruwaru @ Sep 13th 2007 5:35PM

This has been discussed to death in the official MS sponsored XNA forum. It will never be like YouTube because (a) what yall mentioned, money + pressure from commercial devs, and (b) MS wants to censor everything before it's made available for public.

Without multiple hot games, MS won't be able to get people to pay $100 a year. If there are hot games to drive the demand, the official dev who paid $XX,XXXX per dev kit won't be very happy. It's also not very easy to convince your buddies to plop down $100 just to see your game no matter how cool you think it is. Without people able to play your games, it is much economical just to develop the same game on PC instead of X360. The XNA framework on Xbox is also much more restricted compare to what you can do on the PC. The EULA also restrict you from doing commercial works on X360. Without incentives (more than "woohoo, my game is on xbox), there is no point to dev on X360.

The youtube idea might work if each developer gets some free tokens every month, and that hooks people onto the indie game scene. Maybe $5 per month is a more reasonable fee.