GDC08: Mysterious shroud hides XNA secret Options

[Xbox-Scene]

GDC08: Mysterious shroud hides XNA secret Posted by XanTium | February 18 21:49 EST | News Category: Xbox360

From joystiq.com: [QUOTE] An enigma awaits GDC attendees who waltz into the Moscone Center's North Hall, the current home of Microsoft's XNA display. Placed amongst the various screens and demo stations running independent, XNA-powered Xbox 360 games is a sheet bathed in purple lights and mystery. "Coming Soon! Wednesday February 20 11:30AM" declares a nearby sign. If the sign is to be believed, something is set to be unveiled at the conclusion of John Schappert's keynote, "A Future Wide Open: Unleashing the Creative Community." [/QUOTE] Full Story: joystiq.com

[fluffhead]

now open to homebrew?

[twistedsymphony]

I'm guessing user generated content...

either that or completely open XNA distrobution through Xbox Live... Meaning I can develop something with my XNA license and people can download and play it who aren't developers. Since right now I have to send you my source code and you compile it through your XNA license if you have one.

...but yeah that would essentially be "now open to homebrew"

This post has been edited by twistedsymphony: Feb 19 2008, 05:32 AM

[XanTium]

free XNA Creator's Club for Devs?

[ILLusions0fGrander]

free XNA Creator's Club for Devs?

that would be too sweet. its about the only way ill get involved at this point.. i dont have enough exp to do enough to pay for the license fee, but if it were free, i could at least play around in the environment and see whats what.

im already accustomed to visual studio, and from what ive seen, XNA is extremely similar.

[metalcoat]

http://www.news.com/8301-13860_3-9873185-5...ag=2547-1_3-0-5

Microsoft wants more students using its software tools and it thinks it has hit on the right business model.

It's going to give away its software.

Starting this week, college students in 10 countries will be able to get Microsoft's Visual Studio and several other programs for free as part of an effort dubbed DreamSpark. Over the next year, Microsoft plans to offer the program worldwide for college and high school students.

In addition to giving away its Visual Studio tools, Microsoft is also providing no-charge access to its Expression Web design tools and its XNA studio for developing Xbox 360 software. Microsoft already provides discounted academic versions of its software, as well as a free "express" version of Visual Studio. Students can also get free copies of Windows Server and the developer version of the SQL Server database.

"You can go build software applications," said Joe Wilson, Microsoft's senior director of academic initiatives. "You can go build Web sites. You can do a really cool Facebook application...There are a lot of possibilities that comes with this small list of products.

Included in those initial 10 countries are the United States, the United Kingdom, China, France, and Germany.

Clearly, Microsoft has a couple of goals here. One is to get more students who have enough design or science aptitude to enter the software field. The other is to get them using Microsoft's tools early.

"That next generation and future generations of technologists, they are vital to any industry leader like us," Wilson said. Wilson said his goal is to be able five years from now to spot businesses that got their start because a student used Microsoft's tools for free.

"I expect that to happen," Wilson said. "Maybe it's hundreds or thousands of companies."

Bill Gates is set to discuss DreamSpark Tuesday in a speech to students at Stanford University.

Same Thing?

[twistedsymphony]

http://www.news.com/8301-13860_3-9873185-5...ag=2547-1_3-0-5
Same Thing?

not exactly...

At present you can download XNA express, it includes some open license game examples that you can use as a starting point for your own games and with the basic tools you should be able to create a basic XBLA style game that you can run in Windows (not a 360).

If you want to run your game on the 360 you have to subscribe to the XNA creators club ($99 a year) and you'll get a special tab in the dashboard for running your XNA studio projects. You can also send your projects to others in the creators club so that they can run it on their consoles.

If you want to develop full version games you'll need the full version of XNA studio (the license for which is a few grand). I'm not clear as to whether or not you need a development box or if you can run it on regular Xbox 360 hardware though the creators club, I'm guess that the latter is technically possible but not actually allowed.

What it sounds like is that they're giving away the full boat XNA license to students...

What we want is a free subscription to XNA creators club for everyone + a distribution model to send our programs to non-programmers who can just run them as opposed to being limited manual PC based distribution only to others in the XNA creators club.

[0794]

I'm guessing user generated content...

either that or completely open XNA distrobution through Xbox Live... Meaning I can develop something with my XNA license and people can download and play it who aren't developers. Since right now I have to send you my source code and you compile it through your XNA license if you have one.

...but yeah that would essentially be "now open to homebrew"

now that would be very nice and open up the amount of "testers" for various XNA products thus speeding up bug testing as well...oh, yeah, and it would be very fun to say the least for everyone involved...