XNA Game Studio 3.0 Arrives

Posted By: Sarah Perez | Nov 3rd, 2008 @ 10:04 AM

The new XNA Game Studio 3.0 has arrived and you can download it now. This updated version of the toolset for hobbyist game developers is necessary for anyone wanting to submit their games to the upcoming Xbox LIVE Community Games section of the new Xbox Experience, launching November 19th. With the new Game Studio 3.0, indie developers can make games that can be shared with world on the Xbox 360, PC, or Zune. At launch time, there will be dozens of games available on the Xbox with prices starting at $2.50 and up.

The games created with XNA are created by independent developers and are then sent through a peer review process in the XNA Community. Other community members review the content of the game for appropriateness and rate it. The game is then approved (or not) to be deployed to Xboxes everywhere. Microsoft is not getting involved in the approval process, leaving everything up to the XNA community. The entire approval process from submission to Xbox deployment is only 48 hours.

Just because these games are made by professionals, don’t be fooled into thinking they’re going to be simplistic or kids games. Although, sure, there are some Pong clones, there are also feature-rich games that rival anything the pros build. Take for example, “Coliseum,” a game built by a team of 12 indie developers which features rich graphics and a great in-game play experience. You can hear some more about this game and the upcoming Community Games channel in this interview with XNA Community Manager, Kathleen Sanders, embedded below:

Xbox LIVE Community Games

Tags: community, xbox 360, Xbox Live, XNA

Rating:

Comments (2)

Downloads

ispeedonthe405

A 48 hour, community-only approval process? I haven't really been keeping up to date with the news so maybe this has been worked out already, but peer review != QA. Just because these games cost less than a coffee doesn't mean it's OK to approve a title without grinding it into the ground first to find the bugs.

Even if the community organized their own reliable QA process, 48 hours isn't enough time. You can't identify, fix, and resubmit everything in two days.

Signed,
A guy who spent most of the last decade getting paid to program games.

ChaimS

Microsoft XNA ('X' Cross section of powerful software tools and technologies for Windows and XBox 360; 'N' Next-Gen; 'A' Architecture. 'XNA' is not a typical acronym) is a set of tools with a managed runtime environment provided by Microsoft that facilitates computer game development and management. XNA attempts to free game designers from writing "repetitive boilerplate code" and bring different aspects of game production into a single system. The XNA toolset was announced March 24, 2004, at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California. A first Community Technology Preview of XNA Build was released on March 14, 2006. XNA Game Studio 2.0 was released in December of 2007, followed by XNA Game Studio 3.0 on October 30, 2008. ACORN isn’t making itself a whole lot of friends. ACORN, a prime sponsor of the Community Reinvestment Act, which has been surmised as one of the components of the subprime mortgage debacle, has been urging home owners facing foreclosure to refuse to leave, and force government intervention, rather than have the borrowers be their own home savers. The Self-Help Credit Union is a related company, and they have a default rate that is several times higher than other banks, and they are one of the lenders lending to the very people ACORN has been trying to supposedly help….into bankruptcy.