Update: The official press release has more details on the program and a few of the first available games. It also mentions that community-created games "will quickly double the size of the Xbox 360 game library."
At Microsoft's GDC 2008 keynote address, the company announced a "community arcade" allowing user-created games to be distributed to Xbox 360 owners worldwide. "Now, 10 million people on Xbox Live get to play your game," said Microsoft Game Developer Group General Manager Chris Satchell. Free trials of these community created games should be available on Xbox Live "immediately" according to Satchell.
"For the first time, community games will be distributed through Xbox Live," Satchell said. "'Xbox Live Community Games will give creators a huge audience to share their creativity with. Game distribution will be democratized, allowing the community to control the content. Create, Submit, Peer Review, Play are the four key steps ... We want creativity to flow through this pipeline.
Users will be able to upload games using a Gamertag-like "creator identity" which will keep track of your game creation history. Creators can use descriptive sliders to describe a game's content, and peer reviewers can also evaluate the content for appropriateness.
At the keynote, Satchell showed off a short demo of user-created game Jellycar (pictured below), featuring an adorable bouncy, 2D car that drives along on a sketchpad, bouncing up and down on a cartoon road.
More as it becomes available.
(Page 1) Reader Comments
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Then time passed and this potential never showed but the next GDC, this thing became known as XNA creators club. $100 a year subscription to a "potential" factory. Once again, the original promise undelivered but hey, now you have your chance to play these games on your 360... for a price.
Then PS3 comes along and basically blows open their platform for anything from peripherals and mods and NOW MS is finally delivering on something stated long ago, just kept as a "members only" feature.
Now, if user created wasn't such a HUGE push in Sony camp, will MS have done this?
But it's still rather exciting, XNA always had the potential and now maybe we will see some of it's greatness coming to fruition. One can only hope.
Also, that 'jellycar' game looks suspiciously like Crayon Physics Deluxe to me.
Back on topic: I just signed up for Microsoft's DreamSpark program and downloaded an XNA-made Rubik's Cube game, and let me tell ya, that'll be a hit on Community Arcade!
http://www.joystiq.com/2007/11/19/sony-cuts-ps3-dev-kit-price-in-half/
...right?
How long before someone produces something containing copyrighted IP, or Offensive content? I'm guessing 3.83 minutes.
Hot Coffee's got nothing on the games available on the Web.
Some poor MS schmuck is going to have to trawl through the thousands of Breakout clones checking all the resource files and deleting the legions of filth.
I think there will be alot less crap on here than you think.
And I totally I'm copyrighting "Penis's Adventures in Vagina Land".
http://garagegames.com/products/torque/x/
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Love my Zune
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I'm sure there will be a few decent games but they will most likely be surrounded by so much crap that the few gems will be hard to see.
Sorry, but if JellyCar is one the best they can show I don't have high hopes.
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Obviously obscene material, but what else?
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Youtube of games is just a figure of speech. Video's are easy to make, so lots of people make free crappy video's for youtube.
Unless XNA also has a "game maker" like engine built into it, you'll never have the "common man" making games on it, just the common programmer.
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I mean, wasn't MS the ones who said that they didn't want User-created mods on UTIII for 360, but they have a whole service for this? Just seems a little weird that a few months ago, they were dead set against Epic doing this, and am now doing it themselves. This has much to do withh LBP. Even if no one admits it.
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Your comment is nothing short of trying to throw some form of Sony spin on good MS news.
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So...um...Jelly Car was originally released as freeware and is still available from their site. That's the demo they used. There's a huge open source/freeware gaming scene and plenty of flash programmers out there that don't make a dime.
That is a really bad excuse to charge for already freely available games.
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If they were really serious about supporting the PC as a platform then
(a) all this would be available on the PC. No reason at all why it couldn't be.
(b)XNA wouldn't only work with a frickin XBOX360 gamepad.
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It is a Framework, a set of API's to help you code a game for both Windows and the 360 (and Zune in the future). If you make the game for windows you can distribute it in any way you want to, it is just like any other windows game you would install, building to the 360 is different and requires this "Community Arcade" to work.
As to the point about it only supporting a 360 Controller? Not true, unless you only coded 360 Controller code into your game and decided to completely ignore the Classes that specifically support the Keyboard and Mouse.
You are right that anyone making a PC game can put it on the web, etc.. but that doesn't mean that a "Windows Arcade" service from microsoft wouldn't be a much more successful way to get the games out to people.
If I make a game and stick it on a website its unlikely many people will find it. If windows had a built in Arcade then MS could approve the same/different games to go on it... just like the xbox version.
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http://free-playstation3-for-you.blogspot.com
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I can't believe how many people are talking about this new great tool...talking about how it will swing the war in M$'s direction...let's get real...reliable system and tons of REAL games are what wins the console war...M$ failed on the reliable system...but has the tons of REAL games going for them...They better keep coming out will killer exclusive titles...if and when the ps3 catches up with the amount of games...the ps3 will win this round of the war. At what point will 360 fanboys get tired of the RRoD epidemic? After 4 xbox 360's...I'm done and have purchased a ps3...and couldn't be happier...I still have the 360 for the exclusive titles but any game that can be played on both...I purchase for the ps3.
From what I've seen of this user created games...it is a joke...and means nothing in the long run. I'm more interested in what sony just released for making cross platform games...make games for the ps3, 360, and pc...and they already have 3 games out that you can purchase that were made using this new tool...one of the games being Dirt.
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