After opening Xbox Live Arcade to developers and releasing the XNA Framework, Microsoft is continuing its efforts to seek out and publish unique casual games. The company today announced the Dream-Build-Play competition aimed at attracting new talent via independent game developers. Twenty prizes are up for grabs, including a grand prize of $10,000 and an XBLA publishing deal. The contest is open to anyone using XNA Game Studio Express and ends on July 2. Winners will be announced in August at Microsoft's Gamefest. Full details including the fine print everyone's just itching to read can be found at the official Dream-Build-Play website.We've heard promises of more unique games on XBLA before, but according to the Games Portfolio Planner David Edery, Microsoft has firm plans to deliver the goods this year. Dream-Build-Play is an excellent start and, with the recent announcement of GameTap's Indies program, we could see quite an upsurge of unique independent games this year.
