Microsoft Unveils XNA Framework, Opens Xbox Live Service Options

[Xbox-Scene]

Microsoft Unveils XNA Framework, Opens Xbox Live Service -- Posted by XanTium on March 20 10:35 EST
From the pressrelease:
[QUOTE]
In the face of escalating game development costs, expanding teams and ever more complex hardware technologies, Microsoft Corp. today delivered a pre-release version of the first XNA Studio tools and unveiled the XNA Framework to attendees of the Game Developers Conference 2006 in San Jose. Microsoft also announced that the company is opening its Xbox Live Server Platform to game developers and publishers, allowing them to innovate and extend the Xbox Live experience in their titles.

This community technology preview (CTP) represents the first public opportunity for game developers to get their hands on key components of XNA Studio. Included in the CTP is a pre-release version of XNA Build, which delivers mechanisms for orchestrating, debugging and optimizing the game build pipeline. XNA Build also provides studios with a foundation that helps them easily identify game asset relationships and dependency information to unlock a wealth of benefits, ranging from incremental content builds to assistance in identifying orphaned or unused content. Tools such as XNA Build enable game developers to spend less time building and maintaining their internal tools infrastructure, and more time creating great game experiences.

The XNA Framework contains a custom implementation of the Microsoft. .NET Framework and new game-development-specific libraries designed to help game developers more easily create cross-platform games on Windows and Xbox 360 using the highly productive C# programming language. Using the XNA Framework, game developers will benefit from the ability to re-use code and game assets in developing multiplatform titles, without sacrificing performance or flexibility.

In addition to XNA Studio, Microsoft today announced further enhancements for extending Xbox Live services with the Xbox Live Server Platform. Using this platform, developers can create their own back-end servers to run alongside Xbox Live. Developers will get firsthand experience with this update which provides easier-to-manage and more scalable technology on Xbox Live in the next Xbox Development Kit, expected in May.

By opening the Xbox Live Server Platform, Microsoft provides developers and publishers with the tools and environments they need to create all-new online game experiences, and delivers the benefits of an open platform for innovation while providing the solid foundation of the full-featured Xbox Live service. Developers will be able to tap into real-time Extensible Markup Language (XML) feeds to update things such as weather, rosters or other changing information. The Xbox Live Server Platform can also be used to support the creation of massively multiplayer online game worlds. In addition, it will serve as the enabling technology for game developers to unleash their creativity to bring a steady stream of fresh ideas to the Xbox Live gamer community.
[/QUOTE]

Read the whole pressrelease here.

[deakphreak]

Sweet, good job MS

[tiavo]

Damn good job MS !! It's really good to see that MS is listening to the game development comunity esp. those who produce MMO titles that complained that XBOX Live wasn't flexible enough.

[C o s m o]

This is good news...really good news. What will become of our favorite games with this new development?

[Zeral]

More PS3 Network Details Revealed

This opens the possibility that game publishers could charge their own fees for playing games, which is indeed likely to be the case for titles such as massively multiplayer games - a genre which will be well-served by Sony's more "hands-off" approach to the network service, since some MMOG publishers have opined that MS's approach is too restrictive on their business models.

Seems that MS allready knew how to react on this.

[spinr34]

sony is really setting their bar high from what is in that article that Zeral linked to. they basically just said we want everything xbox live has and more with a few months of development unless they've been secretly planning their online service for years and just never said anything. i mean, i'd love to see sony come out of the gate as they're saying but i don't need fantasy land talk, just give the facts. although if they do follow through with the basic service being able to play multiplayer unlike xbl silver that is a leg up for sony but then what will be the difference between sony basic and sony "premium" if you will. honestly, i'm not too worried about MS and the 360 vs sony. sony might have the more powerful machine (by a tad) but i think MS has a lot of tricks up their sleeve. i have a feeling backwards compatibility is going to see a HUGE update around PS3 launch, all those features we want in the dash will be released and a lot of other little gripes that people have will be fixed/resolved. people are complaining now and they won't be expecting much at all from MS in winter when sony launches but i got a feeling MS is saving up everything they can and a few other things they already had planned. i'm ready to see a war, let's go sony!

[Master3xBOx]

sony is really setting their bar high from what is in that article that Zeral linked to. they basically just said we want everything xbox live has and more with a few months of development unless they've been secretly planning their online service for years and just never said anything. i mean, i'd love to see sony come out of the gate as they're saying but i don't need fantasy land talk, just give the facts. although if they do follow through with the basic service being able to play multiplayer unlike xbl silver that is a leg up for sony but then what will be the difference between sony basic and sony "premium" if you will. honestly, i'm not too worried about MS and the 360 vs sony. sony might have the more powerful machine (by a tad) but i think MS has a lot of tricks up their sleeve. i have a feeling backwards compatibility is going to see a HUGE update around PS3 launch, all those features we want in the dash will be released and a lot of other little gripes that people have will be fixed/resolved. people are complaining now and they won't be expecting much at all from MS in winter when sony launches but i got a feeling MS is saving up everything they can and a few other things they already had planned. i'm ready to see a war, let's go sony!

Too bad sony is renownly known for telling lies straight through their teeth. I don't look for much of their promise to come to fruation.

[Brizzzer]

Whats the possiblity of MS acually winning the war by a land slide and shutting Sony out? I mean MS is putting their money were their mouth is, can Sony keep up and not go under cause of it?

[cornatbeat]

THIS IS VERY BAD NEWS.

XNA will ultimately lead to PC-Games with Live!-Support. I don't like to pay for beeing able to play online. This whole Live!-thing with xbox is ok, but it's inacceptable for the PC-Platform.

I hope only very few gamedevelopers will use this framework.

cya&hf
cornatbeat

...who likes to think OpenSource, CrossPlatform

[unclepauly]

xna is sorta like middleware....it gives devs something to work with instead of building their own code. At least that's what I got from it. How the heck are you guys pulling this stuff from the article?

[SMTP]

THIS IS VERY BAD NEWS.

XNA will ultimately lead to PC-Games with Live!-Support. I don't like to pay for beeing able to play online. This whole Live!-thing with xbox is ok, but it's inacceptable for the PC-Platform.

I hope only very few gamedevelopers will use this framework.

cya&hf
cornatbeat

...who likes to think OpenSource, CrossPlatform

Considering XNA is replacing DirectX I wouldnt say few are going to use it.

But noone said the companys are forced to use every function of XNA...

[jimmsta]

I'm surprised that no one linked the March 2006 CTP: http://www.MS.com/downloads/details...&displaylang=en

Also, they've released MechCommander2 as Shared Source, so that you can compile a full game with the XNA Framework... pretty neat, and it weighs in at just over 1GB: http://www.MS.com/downloads/details...&displaylang=en

There might be some issues with the above source code, so they've setup a forum for those of us that want to fool around with XNA and MechCommander2's source code: http://forums.MS.com/MSDN/ShowForum...ID=386&SiteID=1

I'm downloading at the moment, just to check out the 'features'... and see if there's any way to compile for xbox360 right out of the box... probably still needs to be signed by MS, but at least some libraries and such are the same....