Aug 14, 06:16 PM

Microsoft XNA "democratizes game development"

Wow. Microsoft goes open. Yeah, the same Microsoft that all of the open source people hate and is one of the big symbols of proprietary closed software, has announced an open dev platform that can be used by even hobbyists and small studios. The details are a little vague at the moment. It looks like if you want to develop on Windows it will be free, but if you want to put those games on a 360 it will cost a $99 fee (annually or monthly?). There are also more sophisticated tools if you want to pay more.

In any case, this is a huge step. I always complain about how consoles are the past the PC is the future because it is the only open platform – but now that MS has opened up the 360, the lines are blurred. While Nintendo has been going on about their smaller, lower dev cost games and cheap dev kits, Microsoft comes in with XNA and blows past them.

Some things about XNA are a little troubling, though. Why won’t people be able to sell the games they create? If you really want the best games to be created, you have to make it so the most creative, innovative, and talented minds out there can be compensated for their assets. If they wanted to make it truly democratic, they would set up a place where everyone could upload their game, and people could test them out and decide which ones are the best. They could then fund the most popular ones and make a lot of money off of it.

A step in the right direction.

-Jon
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