Some exciting developments were uncovered at Microsoft's keynote today, including details on XNA and community games.
Chris Satchell took the stage to talk about Microsoft's XNA and community games, and he kicked things off with multiplayer co-op gameplay footage from The Dishwasher, winner of the DreamBuildPlay contest. It looked hot, and I'm ready to get my crazed dishwasher killing on.
Several community games were shown off, including the awesome-looking Jelly Car (Tonka trucks and jelly environments), Little Gamers (chainsaws + zombies, or beer + shotguns), Proximity HD, Rocketball, and many more. I don't have footage for you, but I can offer something even better: demos of many these titles should be on Xbox Live now. Go look!
While we know that these XNA titles can be developed for Windows or the Xbox 360, but Chris Satchell showed off a real-time demo of gameplay on a Microsoft Zune. It was basically just a tech demo that Microsoft whipped up, but the touchpad seemed to provide decent control. XNA allows full development for this music player, and its wireless capabilities even permit multiplayer action.
Allowing games created with XNA to be able to be distributed over Live will surely bring lots of new and interesting titles. I can't wait to see what happens when they let gamers make their own games.
Contest:
4:54 PM on 02.20.2008
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Fuck Microsoft.
You have to download the player from the Marketplace blade, so it's possible you just haven't found it yet?
Just looked on my European account, and it's definitely available. Check the marketplace instead of the Arcade blade.
Dude how fuckin cool is the mech level?!? and the Ninja's!!!!
also, no hard feelings..
"Ya gotta download the XNA Game Launcher first by going to the XBOX Live Arcade marketplace, All Downloads, Game Add Ons, and you'll see the XNA section. Download it (like 6 mb's)
then go back to the "Game Library" blade in the dashboard... go to My Games, then scroll over to XNA, and hit Y to download the demo's they put up"
Can't wait to be able to buy these games via Zune Marketplace or XBLA and transfer them to my player
exactly what I thought when I was playing it.
too bad its in VS.NET, I would LOVE something like this on DS/Wii :-)
From what I read from the XNA Blog and the Forums the Zune functionality won't be in until XNA Game Studio 3.0 (beta this spring, final for the holidays).
If it follows the same pattern that the new XNA Community Games is going to follow once the game is peer reviewed and approved for the marketplace you wouldn't need the subscription to play it on the Zune (just like the Community Games will allow for the 360).
Weave