Do any of you reckon that it's possible to make a game using the XNA express framework, and then get it published (by MS or otherwise). I think, looking at the standard of games on Xbox Live Arcade, that I can make a much better game than anything there.
Xbox Live Arcade
Hot Topic
- Power of XBOX360 - raw triangle power
- commercial programs
- GraphicsAdapter.SupportedDisplayModes;
- Rendering a screen aligned quad
- Minimizing and Maximizing
- Day 1 - Where you at?
- Performance profiler and obfuscator
- xml file on xbox360
- Sound is choppy in beta2
- Shader states, etc? (HLSL effects not working right)
Game Technologies
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- A Few Questions
- Computing tangents on a skinned mesh
- The values used in the attempt to create the GraphicsDevice were invalid.
- Doing things the XNA way
- draw dds
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- general use of XNA vertex types?
- XNA - Microsoft lack of vision
- DrawModel Memory Problem
Xbox Live Arcade
Gabriel Méndez
CharlieRussell
No. XBLA is the Channel. Other companies are publishers.
Gabriel Lozano-Moran
Does anyone else think that the GSE community will need a "enthusiast friendly" publisher One that doesn't have their own development kit interests at heart e.g. Garage Games.
I'd be willing to run such a beast; but I'm not sure if Microsoft would be happy to work with a community focused, rather than financially focused, company.
Perhaps Microsoft would be willing to "throw a bone" to such an organisation to help get independent (i.e. new and interesting) content on the Live service...
T
ZDB
Probably nothing, and you may be able to do this to some extent. It's just that if you want your game on the Marketplace with a MS Point pricetag you'll need to go through the whole developer process. I haven't seen MS comment on setting up a paypal website where people can just pay you up front and they email you the registered version of the game or something. Who knows.
Ariel Valentin
If not we can switch back quickly to DirectX, managed (C#, VB) or not (C++).
Toni
Kristian Wedberg
"I think, looking at the standard of games on Xbox Live Arcade, that I can make a much better game than anything there."
That's easy to say but not so easy to do.
That said, yes, from what I understand, a possible path to the XBox Live Arcade is: Develop game using GSE, Get game recognized/accepted by Microsoft for XBox Live, Get XNA Professional version when it comes out, Re-Compile/fix up game for XBox Live, Deploy to XBox Live.
Something like that anyway.
Can-Ann
For a game to be on the Xbox Live Arcade, it will need to pass certification (like all xbox games) and for that you will need an xbox 360 development kit (and be a recognized xbox developer), so you will need to 'wow' a publisher that can help you with that.
As Jeff Weber said you will need to use XNA Professional (when it arrives) which will allow you to target development kits, and is aimed at creating commercial games for the xbox (and Windows).
You can still use XNA GSE to create commercial games for Windows, of course.
kid_kaneda
yeshman
Javahar
PaulSw
Bob_Sullivan
If such an indie-publisher organisation was set up and approved by Microsoft, I wouldn't mind contributing towards the costs. But then again let's not forget all the problems we will have with sharing the dev kit...
I must admit I'm somewhat disappointed that XBLA games require so much approval. Of course Microsoft need to make sure that XBLA games are of a certain quality and suitable for all ages, but requiring a devkit and a publisher doesn't make any sense to me. (If anyone wants to elaberote on the reasons, please do)
Making it harder for indie developers to release games on XBLA will limit XBLA's potential. Let's take Flash games as an example. There are millions of them. Why Because anyone with the Flash authoring tool and enough talent can create one, and then share it with the world with little hassle and cost. I'm not suggesting that we allow anyone to publish XBLA games, but Microsoft should seriously consider making XBLA much more open.
KeithGWilliams
I'm guessing the XNA Professional will be reasonably priced ... $100 give or take. I read something about having to subscribe to some annual "service" for roughly the same amount. Not sure if that gets you access to XNA Professional, or just the rights to even think about publishing. Or both ;)
The tough part will be Cert. Full TRCs I imagine, which are non-trivial (or is it TCRs can't recall which belongs to Msft and which to ... other ... major console developers ;) ).
I guess it depends on what subset they choose to force LiveArcade games to enforce.
All can be painful as they add layers of complexity to the product that are outside what most people think of as the game itself.
Beyond that, there's access to the X360 dev kits to test on before submitting for Cert. Those ain't cheap ($10k I forget the last figure I heard... something in that order-of-magnitude range). Definitely outside the range of most homebrew developer types. And that's not even considering Msft doing clever things like charging license fees just to be on the list of folks that COULD buy a dev kit. ;) I have no clue what other fees are involved, but I can gaurantee it isn't cheap.
So setting up a more community-based publisher would require a chunk of capitol just to get set up, much less hiring any resources to help you polish your game until it's ready for Cert & publishing. Unless we have a few lottery winners in the dev community here, it seems unlikely that anything like that will spring up on a not-for-profit basis.
h1
I got the impression from Major Nelson's podcast on Sunday that Microsoft's thinking is that you'll show your game to a publisher, they'll go "Wow!", then the publisher will send it to Microsoft for consideration on XBox Live. I don't think Microsoft has the resources to consider everyone's games, so they want to deal with game publishers.