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MS Looks to Spur 360 Development

By Ed Oswald, BetaNews

March 20, 2006, 4:01 PM

Hoping to spur innovation in Xbox 360 video games, Microsoft delivered a pre-release version of its tools and technologies development platform at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose Monday. Dubbed the XNA Studio and Framework, the company is betting that it would help developers streamline and optimize the process of creating games.

As well as offering these new tools, Microsoft also announced it was opening up its Xbox Live platform to allow developers to innovate on top of it and add the functionality in their game titles.

Among the components of XNA Studio is XNA Build, which assists in the organization, debugging, and optimization process of coding game builds. It would also help developers to ensure that code is optimized to take full advantage of available resources, meaning they would have more time to focus on game play itself.

"XNA Studio enables all developers -- from major development studios to the two guys moonlighting on a dream project in their garage or dorm room -- to create games in new, more efficient ways," Microsoft's Game Developer Group general manager Chris Satchell said.

The XNA Framework is a customized version of the .NET Framework for the Xbox 360 platform that is optimized so that developers can easily create cross-platform games for Windows and Xbox 360. Microsoft says this will provide great benefits to developers, as they would be able to reuse code across platforms without sacrificing performance.

The programming language the XNA Framework would be based on is C#. Game developers say such a development is a refreshing change. "Anything that simplifies the process of creating great casual games and lowers the development complexity for Windows and Xbox 360 is something we're happy to support," said PopCap Games business development director James Gwertzman.

With the next Xbox Development Kit, due in May, Microsoft would add tools to allow developers to more easily integrate Xbox Live technologies into their titles. The company said its own title, Project Gotham Racing 3, offers an early look at the enhancements available through this new feature.

In Spectator mode in the game on Xbox Live, up to 30,000 spectators can watch racers play in real time. Microsoft said it expects that opening up the platform would provide for future innovative methods of game play.

Add a Comment (14 Comments)

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By drumcat

posted Mar 21, 2006 - 12:58 PM

http://www.microsoft.com...BDA3&displaylang=en

Score: 0

By Maestr0

posted Mar 20, 2006 - 8:14 PM

Umm...how about makely the Xbox 360 widely available first at regular retail outlets?
(and I don't care if you got one from ebay).

Score: 0

By dvferret

posted Mar 20, 2006 - 8:28 PM

that is two totally different areas. You really arnt to smart.

Score: 0

By Maestr0

posted Mar 21, 2006 - 8:59 AM

Wrong. They are linked. Why open development for something that no one can get their hands on?

Score: 0

By Niro

posted Mar 21, 2006 - 9:38 AM

lol you truly are uneducated...it's not even worth arguing this nopoint.

Score: 0

By Das mod

posted Mar 21, 2006 - 11:41 AM

lol , ...... this guy is waaaaaaaaaaay off ...
what the heck does buying have to do with developing ....

go back to watching your teletubbies !!!

Score: 0

By Maestr0

posted Mar 21, 2006 - 6:58 PM

OK. Let me state this slowly...Get CLOSE to the monitor...WHO THE *#$@ is going to waste their time developing a game if you CANNOT MAKE ANY MONEY SELLING YOUR SOFTWARE BECAUSE NO ONE HAS THE HARDWARE TO PLAY IT ON. Get it? Of course not.

It's all over the gaming industry. The big companies are holding back development for the 360 because NO ONE IS BUYING THE GAMES SINCE NO ONE HAS THE HARDWARE.

Learn how the world works, then get back to me.

Score: 0

By Squire72

posted Mar 22, 2006 - 10:56 AM

Everywhere I've been that sells them, they have plenty of consoles for sale...

The shortage is way over.

I don't see the point of buying the console though - the games they have available suck.

Score: 0

By Banquo

posted Mar 22, 2006 - 4:02 AM

LOL, you don't know what you're talking about.

Score: 0

By Jedite

posted Mar 20, 2006 - 4:27 PM

This is huge news for the Game Dev community, and IMO a big blow to Sony and Nintendo. let me explain.

This new framework will allow simultaneous development of software for both the 360 and the PC platform. Even though development before this framework wasnt so hard(crossplatform between Xbox and PC), it still took alot of time to cross over games and debug ect.

This architecture if it delivers on what is promised(from what i read from early SDKs, and documentation it appears to) will not only allow game companies to push out games a bit faster, but to concentrate more on the gameplay side rather than coding of the graphics engine for example.

I am however a bit scheptic on how much over head this architecture will have. Given as how the .NET framework 1.0 had alot of overhead the tradeoff might not be worth it. However since they are pushing this for the gaming market they must have streamlined the framework so that only the necessary components are loaded into memory instead of getting a bloated application like we did with .NET 1.0 .

Score: 0

By drumcat

posted Mar 20, 2006 - 5:25 PM

Jedite, I think I agree with you. Sony & Nintendo are moving their API's away, too. I think that if you can immediately deliver PC & Console in one dev effort, you've cut down your time by a lot. Faster to market. That's a big deal.

I'm gonna have to play with this now. =)

Score: 0

By amed

posted Mar 20, 2006 - 5:24 PM

okai anderson cooper -_-,
i dont think xna will change developer's mind, if they choose to develop for ps3 or nintendo, they will. It will be just a matter of preference

Score: 0

By Jedite

posted Mar 20, 2006 - 6:25 PM

Well im a programmer, and a hopeful game dev, and these news really opens up alot of avenues.

Score: 0

By Das mod

posted Mar 20, 2006 - 5:54 PM

i wouldnt comment so soon there monkey boi ....
remember these devs have very tight deadlines, imagine how well their time would be managed to code for 2 platforms at once ....

Score: 0

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