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XNA Game Studio Express Public Beta Released
Posted by XanTium | August 30 14:12 EST
From the press release: [QUOTE] Microsoft today released the public beta of XNA Game Studio Express, the pioneering technology designed to open up game development to new audiences, including hobbyists, students and independent developers, in the hopes of injecting a shot of creativity into the electronic entertainment industry.
Novice game creators can download the tool today from http://msdn.microsoft.com/xna to develop games for Windows XP and Windows Vista, at no charge. The games built on Windows can be migrated to the Xbox 360 console system starting this holiday season as part of the XNA Creators Club subscription for $99 a year, or a four-month trial cost of $49, opening up retail console game development to anyone for the first time.
Since the announcement of XNA Game Studio Express' upcoming availability on August 14, the public response has been overwhelming - more than 100 schools have requested information on how they can incorporate XNA Game Studio Express into their curricula and the breakthrough news has generated millions of hits on Internet search engines.
As one of nearly 20 leading universities worldwide incorporating XNA Game Studio Express into their curricula, including Southern Methodist University's Guildhall and the University of Southern California's GamePipe, Microsoft announced additional support from DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond, Washington, a leader in the field of digital interactive entertainment education. Through its ProjectFUN software running on XNA Game Studio Express and summer workshops starting in 2007, DigiPen will bring Xbox 360 console game development for the first time ever to thousands of children ages 10 through 16.
"XNA Game Studio Express is an incredibly accessible tool for making games for Microsoft's game platforms and will provide our university students with modern tools and console development experience," said Claude Comair, founder and chairman of the board at DigiPen Institute of Technology. "And now with our ProjectFun for XNA Game Studio Express, we're eager to extend our educational offerings on Windows and Xbox 360 to include young children."
In conjunction with today's release of the XNA Game Studio Express beta, XNA partner GarageGames will begin enrollment for its Torque X beta program which can be accessed via http://msdn.microsoft.com/xna. Torque X includes both Torque Game Builder and a version of the Torque Shader Engine which have both been developed in conjunction with XNA Game Studio Express, allowing budding game developers to use drag and drop tools to easily create great games. The final version of Torque X will be released this holiday.
The final version of XNA Game Studio Express and the XNA Creators Club for building and distributing games on the Xbox 360 will launch simultaneously this holiday. XNA Game Studio Professional will be available in spring 2007. [/QUOTE]
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I'm just wondering. How much is really known about this right now? For example, does anyone know if there is something which would prevent people from making emulators for the xbox360 and then distributing them? Or to go even furthur since I believe I read games made could be transfered to the HD for testing, is there anything preventing someone from making a 360 dash that could work almost exactly like the xbox's?
As far as I can tell MS is basicly saying, aw, the homebrew scene hasn't kicked off yet, lets help them out. Or are there some major blocks MS is imposing to stop this?
This post has been edited by CocodaMonkey: Aug 30 2006, 07:28 PM
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if I'm not mistaken, this time they could have been smart to release to public this development tool in order to avoid modding.
I mean, if you have the ability to run homebrew without having to care about soft or hardmod, relating to alternative dashboards, emulators, divx players, internet radio streamers, and so on...this should be a great move for both (them and us).
the focus is of course gaming development, but if this tool can do more, they just gave natively a bridge to accomplish much without going to breach the 360.
if instead is too closely focused on just that (gaming), they just keep the approach to invite modders to get more on the console like has been done with xmbc on xbox for example, having the benefit of a modded xbox with ftp support.
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There are major blocks in place. Check earlier news posts on this-- the thing requires signed code, meaning MS has to OK your program for distrobution. It's POSSIBLE they may require it on even code you're writing and running locally. Also, network functions are blocked out entirely for the public 360 side of XNA.
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I disagree entirely...
I think that no doubt you can program in emulators or media players with this.
The ONLY drawback.. is that if you want to play it on you 360, you must pay 99.99.
It would be oh so easy to share the code to run from yur pc to 360 just like in the "usual places". But MS probly knows we're gonna do this, so they might as well profit off us. "You want homebrew? pay me 100 dolla!
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QUOTE(R-Dawggy Dawg @ Aug 30 2006, 08:06 PM)
I disagree entirely...
I think that no doubt you can program in emulators or media players with this.
The ONLY drawback.. is that if you want to play it on you 360, you must pay 99.99.
It would be oh so easy to share the code to run from yur pc to 360 just like in the "usual places". But MS probly knows we're gonna do this, so they might as well profit off us. "You want homebrew? pay me 100 dolla!
Nah, you have to pay anyway. If you don't subscribe, your XBOX 360 won't be able to connect to your PC and download the executable and run it. So, it doesn't matter if you get the source code thru XNA or thru bittorrent or whatever, your 360 only will accept to run it if you sign up.
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QUOTE(Hinotori @ Aug 30 2006, 09:13 PM)
Nah, you have to pay anyway. If you don't subscribe, your XBOX 360 won't be able to connect to your PC and download the executable and run it. So, it doesn't matter if you get the source code thru XNA or thru bittorrent or whatever, your 360 only will accept to run it if you sign up.
To be clear, you can't run someone else's executable on your 360, you have to build the sourcecode for your specific 360... with a gamertag linked to the 4 month or 1 year subscription.
Worth it though in my eyes for any amateur developer. Those who can't develop and don't want to learn anything should wait for enough available cool projects before they pay the price of admission. Hopefully sites like sourceforge host them!
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From MS QA:
Q: Can I create non-gaming applications (such as a Media Center/Player) with XNA Game Studio Express? A: On Windows this is possible, but the initial release on Xbox 360 is tuned to writing games. This is an area we are actively looking to the community for feedback on the types of applications they want to write for their Xbox 360.
It appears that they are thinking about letting us develop media center stuff. One thing that sucks is that the QA also states that there is networking support on the windows platform, but not on 360 in XNA.
XNA Game Studio Express Public Beta Released
Aug 30 2006, 07:12 PM
only going at 103kb/s 
