Home > Games > Microsoft Gives XBOX 360's SDK to the World
Microsoft Gives XBOX 360's SDK to the World
Eugenia Loli 2006-08-14 Games 61 Comments
Microsoft's XNA Game Studio Express targetting the XBOX 360 will democratize game development by delivering the necessary tools to hobbyists, students, indie developers and studios alike to help them bring their creative game ideas to life while nurturing game development talent, collaboration and sharing that will benefit the entire industry.
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Tom K
This is totally sweet. Good job, Microsoft.
"MS" haters, this is your cue to tell us how this sucks, is evil, etc. etc. — Basically, all the stuff that the rest of the computing world doesn't want to hear.
bsantos
It doesn't suck, it's an intelligent move from Microsoft.
But it is evil, nevertheless. 😛
Does it allow me to develop in OpenGL and SDL, if I wanted to? Looks pretty sweet thus far.
duckie
Very much no 🙂
Afair, the xbox runs directx 10 (more like 9.5). Whats cool about XNA is, that any platform supporting XNA can play games made in XNA (Xp and Vista included). XNA is a framework, a lot like, and actully build upon .net 2.0, and developement is done in visual studio (so this is another product to express-line)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_XNA
http://www.thezbuffer.com/
Microsoft is really pushing games in managed code – great to see 🙂
chiwaw
"Does it allow me to develop in OpenGL and SDL, if I wanted to?"
I don't know for OpenGL, but SDL always been a wrapper on top of DirectX (now XNA) so you can start developping in SDL for the 360 pretty much right now (or at least very soon) 🙂
Well this one little benevolent act to suck fools into their proprietary systems just washes away all that illegal monopoly misery completely!
So find me an open-source, open-architecture gaming console with industry support.
Oh, what's that? You can't? Then STFU.
Developers developers developers! 🙂
Great move, and not only for them, but also for those who want to try developing games. Not wanting to read it all again, did the article mention anything about deploying the games to ones xbox?
I wonder if sony will make a move against that initiative? There will be some reaction somehow.
snowbender
Great move, and not only for them, but also for those who want to try developing games.
"Great move"? I'd say smart move from Microsoft. Microsoft seems to be really doing its best to attract and tie developers to their platform lately. Also note: "…about academic institutions that are lining up to include XNA Game Studio Express in their course offerings". I wouldn't be surprised if this comes with all sorts of benefits for those institutions. Try to lure young developers to your platform, get them used to it, get them addicted to it… then if you make sure that the game libraries you use, are only available on your own platform(s), then after some time you have a bunch of developers who are "tuned" for your platforms and who will bring you profit by making games for your platform and in many cases, your platform only, since they never learned to use anything else.
You say it's great for people who want to try developing games, but hasn't this been possible for years on the computer on Windows and Linux? Your choice to go cross-platform with SDL, OpenAL and OpenGL, or stick to Windows with DirectX. Or is it just the fact that it's a console? In that case, you could develop games for the PlayStation2 on Linux if you ordered the Linux kit, if I'm not mistaken.
I know, it is probably a nice thing to do from Microsoft and it will probably benefit a lot of people, but on the other hand, they are doing it in their own interest and the fact I am not so happy about it, is that it ties developers to Microsoft's set of game libraries and to Microsoft's platforms.
BluenoseJake
What? Do you expect to be able to develop for the xbox 360 using linux and emacs? Come on get a grip, traditionally, game consoles are closed systems, you aren't going to be able to develop software for the xbox, without using MS's software. Developing for the PS2 is a lot more expensive then this, and this may shock you, but maybe some people don't want to develop on linux, or for the ps2
KenJackson
What? Do you expect to be able to develop for the xbox 360 using linux and emacs?
That is exactly the first thought I had when I heard this on the radio this morning. I already developed and maintain an in-house Windows app using gcc compiled as a mingw32 cross-compiler. So why not cross to the XBOX 360? We've got our choice of http://www.mono-project.com/ and http://www.dotgnu.org/ for the .NET stuff.
My lack of interest in game development in general will keep me from pursuing this, but I hope someone else does it.
"Microsoft seems to be really doing its best to attract and tie developers to their platform lately."
Its not a secret you know, they even say it themselves. The power lies in the developers. Microsoft just plays their cards right.
"…about academic institutions that are lining up to include XNA Game Studio Express in their course offerings". I wouldn't be surprised if this comes with all sorts of benefits for those institutions."
Well of course! They get cheep software, in which they can create games on consoles! That has _never_ been done before.
"Try to lure young developers to your platform, get them used to it, get them addicted to it…"
Microsoft must be drugdealers, according to your description? Excuse me, but that is just too paranoid.
"then if you make sure that the game libraries you use, are only available on your own platform(s)"
There are 3 players in the console-market. Why should the one be better than the other? Or do you mean the PC-games? If you dont count niche-markets, its only windows.
"then after some time you have a bunch of developers who are "tuned" … since they never learned to use anything else. "
Whos fault is it, that they dont learn anything else?
Nothing stops Nintento or Sony to open up their software.. Right now they have nothing to open up, so lets see what they can bring into the fighting-ring when the match begins.
StephenBeDoper
"Great move"? I'd say smart move from Microsoft. Microsoft seems to be really doing its best to attract and tie developers to their platform lately.
Lately? Are you kidding? Compared to the heavy-handedness that Microsoft employed to get content onto the XBox in its early years, this recent move seems almost altruistic.
At the very least, it's a far cry from when they were pulling crap like trying to pay id to delay release of Doom3 in order to have the XBox version ready for release at the same time as the PC version (there were also rumours that they tried to pay Carmack to release Doom3 as an XBox-exclusive title, and not release for other platforms – or at least, release it much later, a la Halo).
audun
I only read the teaser, but it sounds great. Microsoft learned from .NET
Like duckie, I wonder if it creates deployable apps.
This means my game engine should be pretty easily portable to xbox 360! Should be perfect for the arcade thing.
Yes. A good quote from The Zbuffer:
"GarageGames, in collaboration with the Microsoft XNA group, recently ported its full-featured game engine to managed code for Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Xbox 360….. successfully porting a complex suite of game technologies from C++ to C#, .NET, and the XNA Framework"
http://www.thezbuffer.com/articles/405.aspx
Apparently its not so difficult 🙂
Me never dared looking into creating games, will certaily try this out. This could be the big-bang making MS the game-platform-winner.
joelito_pr
Does it means I'm gonna have to reinstall windows to use it?
On a separate note, I think that's exactly one of the reason why Microsoft can dominate the software Industry, I mean, most users play some type of PC game, and now, you'll probably see sales of 360s jumping because of the geeks buying consoles to develop games with and the more casual users buying because of all the games they can choose.
Edited 2006-08-14 08:07
MediaSex
So let's get this straight…
It costs 99 dollars to be allowed the privilege of making homebrew games for the 360.
It costs 99 dollars to be allowed the privilege of playing homebrew games on the 360.
And this is on top of the 400 dollars for the base console.
And the 50 dollars a year Microsoft charges players for the privilege of playing games online. Add a extra 200-250 dollars to the price of the 360 over four to five years.
And the exorbitant prices for peripherals – like 100 dollars extra just for WiFi.
And the 200 or so dollars add on just to play HD movies.
No wonder the 360 is the worst selling console in over a decade at just over 3 million sold after eight months on the market.
Compared to other consoles I say $99 is very cheap. And assuming that if you're a developer have to pay twice that amount is still cheap compared to the price that legally developing for the PS2 and original XBox was.
KugelKurt
It's 99 dollars per year. So after 1 year you can either lose that or pay again.
99 dollars over five years makes it cheaper than the thousands needed to develop games for the older consoles.
And if you are not interested in WiFi connectivity or ability to play HD movies, you can ignore those costs completely.
What do you think it would cost if sony were doing this? A big buck, and software almost nobody can foind out, how to use?
Try google for playstation 3 developer kit.
One of the sites http://playstation3.wordpress.com/
"An informal poll of game developers conducted by Game Informer magazine revealed that 60% of developers that have received PlayStation 3 development rate the kits as being average, highlighting the difficulties of developing for the platform."
I dont belive sony is even thinking about releasing any developement software to the public
"to help them bring their creative game ideas to life while nurturing game development talent"
Beacuse we don't have any and are diying on our feet, and we want new blood we can underpay and overwork and treat as bad as most of the industry's programmers – for less pay and benefits.
Wow, but how's its different from current situation on PC gaming ?
kaiwai
I'd assume that this has some sort of stripped down Windows XP kernel? if so, would it be pratical to create a nice graphical user interface coupled with applications to run ontop of the said stripped down kernel? create a pure XNA based desktop environment with web browser etc.
basszero
Of course any application/game you write is probably published to Live and probably subject to review by MS. While some apps will likely make it, I can imagine truly useful apps (port of XMBC anyone?) will never be allowed through due to DMCA-type restrictions.
Ronald Vos
This is just like having blogs. It lowers the cost of entry, thus significantly increasing the amount of crap that survives in the marketplace.
Is it worth it to suffer 99 duds in the hope of finding that one gem?
shotsman
<disclaimer>
I don't play console based computer games. I don't own a console of any sort.
</disclamier>
The majority of Gamers I know don't care about developing games in the slightest. Many of them are software developers and have had enough of developing at the end of their (sometimes very long) work day to want to do this.
Being cynical, I see this as a way for Microsoft to claim in letter six feet high that they have more cames on thier console than exists for <insert console name here>.
It strikes me as a pretty desparate move my MS. I guess sales must be fagging badly. The annual licenses are another attempt to get the long term revenue stream up or at least get the XBOX division to get somewhere close to break even.
There again, I might be wrong. Sometimes you are but I have the feeling that XBOX == Edsel. Why, the gamers I know all bought an XBOX when it came out. About half have sold them at a considerable loss on EBAY since.
Well then you dont know much about the modding-community.
Games like halflife were (and still are) popular because of games made by modders (counterstrike specifically). And the reason modding was popular for halflife, was because it was _easy_. The same for halflife 2. There is a reason more and more games release a SDK.
"With the Playstation 3 you can develop on the PS3 in any format you choose on IBM's open source Cell proccessor."
I am pretty sure its the same for xbox 360 games.
"You" as in everyone can only do it throug XNA..
If sony wanted to let anyone make games for the ps3, they would have to make a framework like MS did, they would not get access to the whole system.
With XNA as the engine, the game remains Papa MS' property.
insultcomicgeek
I like how a monopolist wants to democratize something. I guess it's their own implementation of democracy. ("Hey, you should use our DemocracyX. You will be able to "free" countries twice as fast!")
OK, they don't have the monopoly in the console world yet. Hell.. the XBOX360 sales are abysmal.
If anyone else would be doing this it probably would be a good thing but as it's Microsoft you just can't get around the thought they're just trying to continue their "strategy" to lock more and more people to their platform. Well, the DirectX marketing campaign doing a great job so far as everyone already seems to await the new release of the API collection as it would be the f–king second coming of jesus.
Also it reminds me of the closed source online gaming schemes where they force you to do much low level gaming to where it is impossible to gain real benefit from the game until you reach the higher levels and then it's too competative.
It's like an addiction. They suck you in waving a free XNA license in front of you to those who recieve most hits for theire game and then they still own it anyway so it's rigged. They say it's for hobbyist but still it will trick allot of less experinced people.
flanque
I see this in two lights. It's extremely generous from Microsoft opening up the platform to smaller outfits but at the same time it would seem to be a very convenient way to get young raw tallent hooked on the Microsoft way.
Overall I don't really mind because it's been seen so many times in just technology alone.. if any outfit gets so big and pig headed, people will revolt to the next big fad. Sony walkmans vs Apple iPods is an example.
That aside, there are a great deal of hobby programmers who, frankly, I don't think should be prevented from developing for any console.
I guess it could be compared to today's closed source mod scene; albeit at a higher price probably to participate. For me personally that's why I moved to open source game modding as it's more laid back for me. Honestly I found allot of modders ro be very rude in that arena so I went over the Linuxgames.org where it's all free.
Not sure if I will purchase the PS3 though but it is an open format.
I personally quit writing for windows when they began forcing people to get an MSDN subscription to recieve the latest DirectX bug fixes and patches, DX used to be free for the downloading until they reigned it in. Marketing seems to get their cues from crack dealers, they use the same ruse. I'm not going to donate my time to make their trash more attractive thereby making them richer and buying my ticket to hell any more. Open source is redemption.
n4cer
The DirectX SDK is freely available from Microsoft Downloads. New versions of the SDK are released generally every 2 months.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/results.aspx?DisplayLang=en&nr=2…
Sure, after MSDN subscribers have already had it for awhile unless they changed that policy, I wouldn't know since I swore not to let them put me in that position again by never using any of their SDK's, since around the mid/late 90's or so, think it was DirectX 8, no maybe it was 6.
The only people that get the SDK before the public are beta testers. There is no lag time between MSDN and the general public having access to the SDK.
MollyC
What are you talking about? The DirectX SDK is free, no MSDN subscription required. The updates/patches are free as well.
After looking closer I notice they crippled it so the games will not be as good looking as their MS counterparts or the MS version that will probably follow anything that might have a remote chance to become popular, so really it's only half a carrot now isn't it?
How did you look closer and determine that "they crippled it"? The SDK isn't even available until August 30th.
fluffybunny
Well, it's really quite obvious isn't it. If they were to enable full function, what's to stop developers from using it to create their games. My guess is that it's crippled, and only way to overcome these would be to get the full fledged development kit.
They don't have to cripple the APIs (and AFAIK they aren't) to keep pro developers out of the program. Pro developers have better support, wider distribution, early access, marketing partnerships, and access to actual XBOX 360 dev kits and pressed media. They can test and debug right on the hardware rather than having to debug on a PC, then burn a DVD to test on the 360.
It's not unlike the seperation between hobbyist and pro developer segments on Windows. Pros pay for MSDN for access to better tools and other incentives while most hobbyists settle for notepad, VS Express, or other free/lower-cost tools. And, as hobbyist devs create good software, MS will be looking to support them and help them turn pro just as they have such programs for Windows devs.
cchance
The 99$ is the subscription to distribute and have access to the distribution network… the XNA BSE IS FREE … god i hate microsoft haters… they have no idea what their talking about they just stick to it and bi*ch that microsoft sucks….
You can develop for free but distribution costs money simple as that… plus you can renew/cancel as you seem fit.
Also this is DIRT CHEAP even with a subscription the PS2 kit the yaroza or whatever stupid name it was called was 700+$ just for the kit to develop not FREE like the XNA BSE.
schmedly
The $99 fee gets you access to the distribution network, this is true. What people are missing so far is that for anyone else to be able to access your product requires them to have a $99 subscription as well. This limits your target market to developers.. it does not encompass the entire XBox Live network.
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=409378
aesiamun
I see nothing from Microsoft that says this won't be available to already Live subscribers. Basically the $99 is meant to make up for the distribution channel that MS provides with the subscription. I don't believe that the user will have to pay the same as well.
The user pays for XBLive for this type of thing already which, depending on how they pay is around $99 a year.
*edit* removed typo…
rapidwire
According to the XNA FAQ (http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/xna/faq/), in order "to develop, debug and/or play games on the Xbox 360 you will be required to purchase a XNA "Creator's Club" subscription on the Xbox 360 through Xbox Live Marketplace. The subscription is available in 2 options, $99 a year or $49 for 4 months."
If you don't pay, then you can only develop for Windows.
Yeah i know about the development part, that makes sense. The pay to play stuff is stupid. It severely limits who has access to this because it basically doubles the cost of a customer because they are already paying for XBLive and now they pay for "Creator's Club" or whatever they call it. It limits distribution endpoints
Has this been announced on the PS3? No, so STFU. Thanks.
XNA isn't an engine dumbass. It is a bunch of .NET libraries with a free version of Visual Studio .NET and a few tools.
Geeez, some of you kids are clueless on purpose. How do you get around in this world being so stupid?
capricorn_tm
I have a friend that as side activity to his job, install mods Chips on consoles.
The Old Xbox was one of his normal batllefields and the other day I heard of him, I asked when the chip that finally unlocks the Xbox360 will be out, so that the 360 can become the TRUE successor to the Xbox. (I so hope none here thinks people did buy the Xbox for the games, do you?).
Well the answer was " From what I hear, never ever. They sold so little number of those that none bothers doing a chip on a machine like that."
So here is the opening of the SDK, wonder if things are related )
If by "those" your friend meant XBOX 360s, he's mistaken. MS has sold over 5 million XBOX 360s.
What are you smoking and where can I get some?
Soulbender
"MS has sold over 5 million XBOX 360s."
On a global scale that's not all that many.
That's 5 million more Xbox360's than PS3's, though. ;-p
Q: How exactly can I share my 360 game to other 360 users? Will my game only be available to people with the XNA "Creators Club" subscription? Will it be available to all 360 users that have an Xbox Live account?
A: There is currently no supported way to share binaries on the Xbox 360. Currently, there are four requirements that must be met in order to share a game targeting Xbox 360 which is developed with XNA Game Studio Express.
1. The individual you are planning to share the game with must be logged in to Xbox Live and have an active subscription to the XNA Creators Club
2. The receiving user must have downloaded the XNA Framework runtime environment for the Xbox 360
3. The receiving user must have XNA Game Studio Express installed on their own development PC
4. The game project, including all source and content assets, must be shared with the receiving user. The receiving user then compiles and deploys the game to their Xbox 360.
While this means you have to pay to share and get from others currently, the wording suggests that it may change in the future.
nathanbates99
The Xeon devkit has a PowerPC Visual C++ compiler.
But this XNA free edition only supports
some weird bytecode-interpreted language.
Might work for a 2D side-scroller,
but not in a tight loop that's transforming 3D vertices.
For that, C/C++ is strictly required.
XNA does most common game-oriented ops (ie. vertex transformation, texture management, I/O) in C++ or hardware under the covers. So the higher-level language isn't really a hindrance, any more than (for example) scripting hinders Apache.
Obviously you've never done any game programming.
Try sorting thousands of 3D objects or recursing
into the octree of a particle-system
using byte-code every frame.
The $99 edition is cripple-ware.
Obviously you've never done any MDX/C# coding. The code is compiled and one of the things the compiler optimizes is collection iteration. If you look around, you'll find examples of commercial and non-commercial 3D games/game engines written in C#/MDX, and WPF (Microsoft's new presentation framework for Vista) is written in C# as well.
The only thing unmanaged DirectX offers over XNA is direct support of D3DX. The only reason this isn't directly available in XNA is that the XBOX doesn't support it. Last, if you're just more comfortable with C++, you can probably use C++/CLI.
andrewclear
Yes, MS is doing this, because it's in thier best interests. Who here, doesn't do things in their best interests?
This is the next revolution in the game industry. The last time developers were allowed easier access into console development, was when sony granted licenses to anyone and everyone that would pay for their dev kit, which was one of the cheapest on the markets at the time (oringinal ps).
As for no c++ support, who cares? Many games are programmed in only C. I personally like to mix C and C++, but, if I had to only use C, it wouldn't bother me. I just can't wait to get my hands on one of these kits, and grab me some garage games libs, and have some fun. 99 dollars is a bargain to be able to develop for a console.
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