Dream-Build-Play contest finalists announced

Why don't they just let us have all the runners-up for free?

This is great they doing this to high light the common Joe. Yet i still would like to see them do what they promised years ago. Have a pulic selection on the MP with a rateing system so every x360 owner can try them out. If it sucks or if its great we should be allowed to put them up and try. As for the rateing system if it falls below a point it gets removed from the MP. If it remains high enough it stays on the MP for DL.

Why do XNA games take so damn long to come out on XBLA?

Surely if the games are good enough to become finalists, they deserve to be published to the arcade? What hope does this give people trying to get their own game onto the XBLA?

That's great, my friend's game is a finalist.

"What hope does this give people trying to get their own game onto the XBLA?"

Well, it even kind of implies that if they win this competition that the game will receive a larger budget to be fully realized... so I mean, I have to imagine it's like any other contest in that sense. Your hope is that you'll reach the top and get it made. That's certainly more than anyone would otherwise get.

great way to build content for years this is a great idea even after they have winner they will still have some great titles sitting in somedark room awaiting there release.

poster 1 (Yay), Microsoft do not even give WALLPAPERS away for free to its loyal customers so they are not going to give games, even homebrew games to us without charging us
(probably to pay for their unprecedented repair bill.)
Remember this is the company who tried to charge 800points for .....solitaire

You can play some of the finalists for free:

http://swampthingtom.blogspot.com/2007_08_01_archive.html

In order to play the Xbox360 versions you need a membership for the creators club, which costs some money - but you can install the windows versions without any membership.

The XNA tools are:

crossplatform to develop on both windows and Xbox360 at the same time.

free to use - for both commercial (on windows platform) and freeware games (Xbox360 and windows)

no licence fees or royalties need to be payed even for commercial games...

I want to applaud to microsoft for the opportunity they gave me to develop one of the finalists!

-Hellborg