Microsoft has confirmed that it is working on a distribution platform that will enable users of its XNA Game Studios - which allows users to develop from their bedrooms - to make their games available to the general public.
Chris Satchell, general manager of Microsoft’s game developer group, confirmed to Develop, “...we need to provide people a stage to play on, a distribution medium so that they can show off their creativity to everyone. That’s always been our vision and remains our vision.”
Going into a bit more depth, Satchell said, “It’s always been our vision since we’ve started. We use a music analogy – you know, it’s like we’ve given the instruments so they can go and play music now, but what’s the radio station where they can reach everyone? It’s cool that they can invite people around and play in front of them, which is sort of the Creators Club, but hey, they want to play to the world.”
The “Creators Club” that he refers to is a group of XNA users on the 360 who can freely share their Xbox 360 games. Since subscription to XNA Creators Club costs £65 a year, however, that doesn't help your average gamer. It's not so much of an issue for users of the tool making PC games, who can freely distribute them among themselves, but the games are still only available to those who own the tool.
At this year's Develop Satchell stated that there needs to be a reasonable amount of existing content for such a platform before it can be made available. “Yes, we’re actively working on how we would do [that sort of service] – the technologies required to make that happen”, Satchell confirmed.
“We don’t have anything to announce about it yet, but I think it’s really exciting, and to me that’s the next really big step – we’ve opened up the Xbox, we’ve given a cross-platform framework, we’ve changed the paradigm of game development to make it easier”, Satchell added.
This isn't the first time Satchell has talked about a YouTube concept for gaming. Back in March, when Microsoft announced its XNA competition, Satchell said, “This is like games meet American Idol meet YouTube.” It is encouraging, however, to see that Microsoft firmly intends to make such a distribution platform available.
There's a lot of talk going round about new software platforms at the minute, with Sony's Jamie MacDonald having recently stated that no-one's ever done anything like Home.
Source: Develop
Chris Satchell, general manager of Microsoft’s game developer group, confirmed to Develop, “...we need to provide people a stage to play on, a distribution medium so that they can show off their creativity to everyone. That’s always been our vision and remains our vision.”
Going into a bit more depth, Satchell said, “It’s always been our vision since we’ve started. We use a music analogy – you know, it’s like we’ve given the instruments so they can go and play music now, but what’s the radio station where they can reach everyone? It’s cool that they can invite people around and play in front of them, which is sort of the Creators Club, but hey, they want to play to the world.”
The “Creators Club” that he refers to is a group of XNA users on the 360 who can freely share their Xbox 360 games. Since subscription to XNA Creators Club costs £65 a year, however, that doesn't help your average gamer. It's not so much of an issue for users of the tool making PC games, who can freely distribute them among themselves, but the games are still only available to those who own the tool.
At this year's Develop Satchell stated that there needs to be a reasonable amount of existing content for such a platform before it can be made available. “Yes, we’re actively working on how we would do [that sort of service] – the technologies required to make that happen”, Satchell confirmed.
“We don’t have anything to announce about it yet, but I think it’s really exciting, and to me that’s the next really big step – we’ve opened up the Xbox, we’ve given a cross-platform framework, we’ve changed the paradigm of game development to make it easier”, Satchell added.
This isn't the first time Satchell has talked about a YouTube concept for gaming. Back in March, when Microsoft announced its XNA competition, Satchell said, “This is like games meet American Idol meet YouTube.” It is encouraging, however, to see that Microsoft firmly intends to make such a distribution platform available.
There's a lot of talk going round about new software platforms at the minute, with Sony's Jamie MacDonald having recently stated that no-one's ever done anything like Home.
Source: Develop
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