Microsoft to offer cheap Xbox 360 game dev kit?

'But at the Game Developers Conference here on Tuesday, the rumor is that Microsoft plans on announcing Wednesday a developers kit that would make it possible for anyone to build games for the console, or for PCs, and that the kit will cost only about $100.'

http://news.com.com/2061-10797_3-6052255.html

Sounds like we have a way to get some homebrew games ported into this... That should be interesting to see how the Indie market of gaming's gonna take off with this one.

Of course building games and publishing them in a runnable format are two entirely seperate things...

Microsoft has a major vested interest in keeping it a semi-closed platform, and considering that they are going absolutely out of their way with signed binaries and such to prevent people from running non-authorized software (e.g. linux, what not), and that they prevent you from running stuff from recordable media (to prevent 'backup copies') one would wonder how all of that fits in the big picture...

Most likely they'll still charge you your first born to be able to actually *publish* something in a runnable format. Making it and running it are two entirely seperate issues.

Exactly. If you have a marketable product, building it for the XBox is going to be the least of your worries.

Wow 100 dollars? That is great value.
If they're that cheap, even I might invest in one.

Although knowing MS you'll probably have to buy a 1000 dollar version of Vista to use it with.

100 bucks? Are you sure you haven't missed off a zero? :)

For $100 I might just buy it on a lark. Maybe someday getting games onto the online 360 game thing. (99% chance of not getting them there, but what the heck)

hahahahaha... don't get too excited over this news... while it looks really great on the surface, the fine print under the rumor may include a licensing agreement for commercial exploitation resulting from the use of this tool which could entail costs much much more than the initial outlay of the $100...

and then again, who knows...

--Mike

The devkit then would only cover XBox Live Arcade games anyway ...
Not full devkit ...

This kind of stuff was what MS planed with their XNA, not? :)

Personally, I'd only be interested in XBox Live Arcade development, anyway.

id buy an x360 if they did that

Actually, the Xbox Live Arcade for the 360 already have a bunch of indie games that you can demo, and purchase, all automated through the console. You can buy indie games like Geometry Wars, Mutant Storm, Zuma, Outpost Kaloki, etc... These are all games that were shareware games before being on Xbox Live (some are even Flash games). The average cost of purchasing the games are about $5.

The idea is that indie developers can develop shareware games, but Microsoft will sell them for you exclusivly on Xbox Live, taking a big cut of the money for themselves, of course. So Microsoft definatly has a financial incentive for letting indie game makers develop games for the console. Supposedly Xbox Live Arcade is expected to be one of the most profitable parts of the new Xbox (because the investment is so low for Microsoft - the indie game developers are taking all the risk and putting up all the money for the game, and Microsoft doesn't need to advertise them and there is no manufacturing cost).

I know people here like to bash Microsoft, but what they are doing with the Xbox Live Arcade is actually pretty cool.

Just an important note though: You probably won't be able to develope a full on AAA title. All the Xbox Live Arcade games tend to be puzzle games, or sim games (like Outpost Kaloki). The games they select for Xbox Live Arcade are not supposed to be direct competitors to the games you buy in stores... they are supposed to be smaller, more "shareware" style games.

Bah, maybe to make it better, might as well buy that X360 SDK, and maybe Novell's SuSE Linux (considering that X360 may use a Linux setup as well like the original), and see what I can come up with then. Then again, with the Pocket PC infrastructure, if an iMac or Mac Mini'll be best for development, then so be it. Now that Apple went with Intel, it's gonna make things a little tougher on the development process.

Games on Arcade are supposed to be 'simpler' but they won't limit you to just 2D puzzlers or anything. Think quick one trick pony type games that can be easily consumed and fit within the 50 MB limit. I went to IGC this year and met a few members of the Live Arcade team (had them play Aerial Antics too). I also mentioned the title which I debuted there "Oust" ... which I was told would be exactly what they were looking for. I'm essentially aiming all of my efforts for that platform because the type of games I like to make are better suited for that audience.

Basically as far as I'm concerned, I'd like to come up with Atari and Intellivision clones myself, some totally 3D, some with 2D engines, but 3D-style graphics and sound. I'm looking to revolutionize the retro arcade into new millenium ground (which some companies did, but they failed miserably, not me, tho. If I do, well, that's my own risk). Most games made these days are too realistic, that they just aren't fun anymore. Retro gaming can't be made too ultra boring, and seems like it deserves a technology face lift, and brought back into battle. To bring this to the X360 would be an honor, IMHO. Indie game development will help this industry out a big deal. Let's hope this helps a little...

There is a couple of articles available that discusses the XNA Development Environment:

http://bink.nu/Article6501.bink

http://www.microsoft.com/XNA/3.20.2006.aspx

I don't quite get what is being offered here. Is this basically like the DirectX SDK but cross platform for PC/XBox 360? What level of stuff will already be implemented - eg. collision detection, sound? What about exporters for 3D modellers (we all know these are THE pivotal point of any good game programming process). And I'm not talking about those stupid damn .x exporters either - they suck hard. That OGRE exporter, but for XNA ... now THAT would work ;)

I'm sure you'll still need an engine to go with this ... but who knows. As far as I know an XDK is 10 grand ... and Torque Shader 360 is another 10 grand ... which will possibly shoot up to 25 G's. If they really lower the bar so that anyone can produce games I'm all for it. As far as I can tell your chances of getting on XBox Live would be no worse than winning the IGF. Maybe ... in a best case scenario Mark can produce a version of Blitz3D for the 360. It looks like the indie movement has really pushed the envelope too. Sony and Nintendo both seem poised to offer opportunities as they attempt to really open up the market.

>>...Blitz3D for the 360...<<
that would be great.

According to Jay Moore, the Torque shader engine for 360 is going up to $25,000 when TSE is released at the end of the year :( Marble blast did so well that they decided to adjust the price of the engine.

So to develop in torque on 360 is going to cost somewhere un the region of $35,000 not including a lot of support.

My guess is the $100 SDK doesn't provide you with hardware, much too cheap when you consider the price of a retail system. Maybe they have a way to interface your PC to a retail 360, kind of like how the original Xbox Debug kits let you do a lot of development on those.

Sounds good, and may offer opportunities for porting engines to the 360.

Maybe it's just a memorycard/usb dongle? That's what the Net Yaroze used.

Maybe that's Microsoft's anwser to the old Net Yaroze technology. I sort of regret not getting a Net Yaroze back during the old PSX days (even tho you could've bought a nice Celeron-based PC back then). Yeah, that would be nice to get into X360 development, I may try upgrading my original XBox for a 360, see how much that will lower the price (if EB Games or Gamestop's running any upgrade specials, that would be of some help to the cost of a 360). Then on top of that, if anyone's selling the 360 SDK in the open market, that would be better yet, then I'll get myself started on some Intellivision/Atari-clone games, and bring those into the mix. Of course, unless the 360 allows for 3D development (unlike the original XBox which that freeware SDK doesn't do), that's probably the best I'm gonna do. I'd like to see a 3D version of Astrosmash being made, hope those "Blue Sky Rangers" don't mind a clone of their games, surprised they're still around after all these years.

Given that the 360 is not running on an x86 architecture and that B3D *only* runs on x86, such a thing would be highly unlikely.

If anything, blitzmax would be a likelier candidate to be ported at some point, given how it's already multi-platform... Yet somehow I doubt that such a conversion is very high on the to-do list at the moment, given that BRL is still working hard on the 3D module.

You should have done - there was a great little community going on, back in the day. It also lead to a good few people (including myself) getting jobs in the industy.

Well, the Yaroze was a little on the expensive side (it was about the price of a Celeron PC), but unlike a real PC, the Yaroze had porting power. However, I'm not too sure if the PS2 would be backwards compatible to the Yaroze architecture, tho. I know for a fact that the PS3 won't do much...

Iron Bob: What do you mean by "porting power"?

That it's able to turn your PC game right into a PSX port with the help of the right code... Better hope that's what the X360 SDK's going to be like.

they should make a windows wrapper for 360 that would enable indies to run their windows games on the 360. If the 360 can emulate the old Xbox, and considering how simple most indie games are compared to your average commercial title.

Doesn't seem that it would have much problems running a blitz game.

Well, that's not actually how it works. With the Yaroze, you compile your source directly into PSX native code on your PC/Mac, and then uploaded it to the PSX and run it. There is no porting of code involved.

the most likely limitation on the cheap sdk will be that it can only be distributed for sale online

Personally, I don't see that as much of a limitation. :)

Microsoft XNA Build March 2006 Community Technology Preview (CTP)

Brief Description
Microsoft® XNA™ Build is a tool which will help game studios manage the growing complexities of their game content builds.


http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=868FE562-5DED-4BB1-8648-708D3481BDA3&displaylang=en


Not quite what we are looking for but related.

Sweet, gonna d/l this to a DVD or CD now, and wait to see when that $100 SDK bundle's gonna be out.

212 MB? Well, since I only have a 256 KB Cable connection (on par with DSL speeds), I may do this bright and early tomorrow morning instead. Serves me right for having the value connection for my high speed internet, nothing "high-speed" about it. Wonder how XBox Live's gonna be on this, haven't really done multiplayer (of course I don't want to shell out $70 for something you can do for free on the PC).

I think that Microsoft, and maybe Nintendo, have realized that the AAA game studios have forced a stagnant situation on the industry. Games cost so much to make now that trying new things becomes more and more risky, and yet, not doing anything new forces the market to split profits among a bunch of like games that come out near eachother.... do I pick this racing game, that one, or the other one, when they are really just like my old one with slightly better graphics... more and more people are waiting for the prices to come down to 20$ or less and making it even harder to be successful with any title...

essentially... the cost to make a game goes up faster than the cost of technology... so while the games can DO more, it must cost more to PRODUCE them. what once took a team of 5 to do, now takes teams of 50 or more... Not because the quality of things is higher, but because the number of things is higher...

A great example is Morrowing to Oblivion...

They are basically the same game... minor differences, but Oblivion could have easily been made for the Xbox and not Xbox 360... however it has much MORE... and not in a way that really matters when you get down to it..... there are more objects with more polygons and more faces and weapons and armors and dungeons and more wilderness and more textures and more more more... and it all costs money.... in reality.. the only thing Oblivion does that morrowind -couldn't- is the AI... and I'm not so sure it couldn't have been done...

Oblivion had to look like it does... thats what we expect... thats what the industry drives us to expect... People weren't getting tired of their xbox and ps2... they were getting tired of the same game over and over... and they weren't excited for the next gen for any reason other than that it might offer something NEW

even if what is new is the graphics.... which so far is ALL that is new with the 360... and most games didn't even get that right...

All the things I was ecited for didn't happen yet.... interfaceless games, new gameplay driven by the power of the system... graphics driven gameplay (like the how Fight Night's supposed to have, where you can see stuff in the players faces)

What does this all add up to? An industry that needs something freash and a way to get it to the people.... And when a game of Xbox Live Arcade becomes popular and doesn't something new... maybe even makes a new genre.... you better believe the big companies will have more made... with better graphics... and large breasted near-nude girls, and lots of blood.

I suspect the $100 kit is indeed the XNA. (Which sounds like it's an abstract interface layer between C# and the "DirectX"s of PC and XBox 360).

This is a good move on MS's part, as they will probably use this model for future XBox consoles, and essentially remove the learning curve and allow very early prototyping on future microsoft consoles.

Of course, this won't include the hardware, or the licences, or Visual Studio (which I suppose you can arguably do without if you're familiar enough with .Net's command line compiler)

I'm sure your $100 gets their published standard and c# interface layer to support it.