This was their 'atom bomb' announcement?

This is great on paper, but I doubt anyone is going to play any of these if they're not free.

I guess it's great for kids though... or something.

pay to play amateur developed games? You know we can do this for free on the PC, and developers don't need to buy XNA for the PC either...

wait... who was it that said garage studios are dead?

@BD:

did bill gates rape you as a child or something?

@LordMaim: Yeah, I am right there with you. This is and always has been a fairly minor feature of the 360 ever since they announced. I honestly could care less about this personally. Oh well, maybe someone does.

im so sick of paying 1000's of points for shitty games, and then to get them for free later.

Maybe this is supposed to counter Littlebigplanet?

I'm pretty sure that we could already do that over the internet.

ok, so now Microsoft expects us to pay to:
Play games online
XBLM games
Play Demoes when they are released
Themes and pictures
AND now Amateur games that were made in some guys basement in about 5 days that is worth about 10 minutes of play time.........

Uh. Sounds sweet to me. Like the Threadless of games.

Try Again .... Microsoft

***hint*** something people will care about

i was on Xboxlive last night and i got cursed out right as i went in a room...these are people who dont care about bullshit like this or thinking. If they really want to have huge sales there should be a 360 that comes with a fucking bottle opener

I suspect the suits don't understand the existence of Indie games, so maybe this things is not that great, maybe that thing is for small developers (small as in the size of korea).

If that thing really able any random guy to make a fun casual game and distribute there, is trough provoking. But suits don't work like that. You don't get revolutions from the suits guys, you get evolutionary stuff.

But wait and see. Valve is cool, but don't able 3th party people to sell or distribute mods trough Steam. Can Microsoft be more dev friendly than Valve? *shock and horror*

User-created games targeting the 360... the mind reels. Anyone who's ever wanted an FPS set entirely within a football stadium with Mountain Dew power-ups and a helpful pop-up XBLA thesaurus containing only synonyms for "ur gay!" will soon have quite a bounty to choose from...

OMg sounds to me like we get user created mods too hrrrm

maybe im too hopeful though.

@manjikengo:

Who said that? XNA is completely different from allowing game mods.

@magic_envelope:

Yes, he came in to my room and HE TOUCHED ME IN MY SPECIAL PLACE!

Sounds great. This is what I thought the whole XNA jazz was going to be to begin with.

The article says "distributed," not necessarily "sold." That leaves a glimmer of hope.

Not sure what advantage XNA will have over the PC equivalent that would incent developers to invest their time in it.

If they allowed you to use game resources and engines, then it would be a different story but I suppose that's what user mods are for.

This may be the Youtube of games they had hinted about. Sure this could be done on PC. But I think a lot of indy devs would love the opportunity to make console games and we have seen some indie games get the love the deserve on consoles. MS had been trying to get the indie devs on the system with XNA but the problem was there was no guarantee there work would even be saw so really it was a waste of time and money for many if they ended up having to just release on PC anyway to be seen by anyone other than other XNA club members. So this is a good thing for MS to deliver on XNA.

I don't know why there is hate for this though sure this may mean that there are tons of crap games but there will also be gems. This is a big announcement and a great thing for gamers and indie devs alike. Yaroze was a sony attempt at this back in the day and we got a great game devil dice out of it. If this does well Sony and maybe Nintendo will follow suit and that is good for everyone.

@BD: 200 extra games is good, it's great even just for free trials as there's 200 games you might like. It's great really but not super great in the way a few extra AAA games would be.

"free trial downloads" indicates play a bit now and pay for more later.

Making a sort of XNA mod-type community would be a great idea but if you have to pay any amount to play amateur games it loses it's appeal. I can go online and play Desktop Tower Defense all day for nothing. Why would I pay for Jelly Car?

I think the creator should have the choice of making his game free or not though.

Lots of negative comments in here. Glad to hear everyone's up for trying something new...

I have to agree, not free = not played. But it seems decent in theory.

@SavageSalad: I agree.

The only negative bit of info I can see for this announcement is the possibility of having to pay for these games. A simple fix to anybody that's complaining about getting "basement-made games": don't dl them. Nobody's got a gun to your head.

@Xaltmas: Sony's done this with more tan just little big planet, Flow and Everyday shooter were both indie games I believe. Heck, Devil Dice on the ps1 was an indie developed game built on a netyazoo iirc.

In fact, it's worked out prettty well for sony so far, and i've had hopes that sony will expand the program and or allow true indie developers for a nominal fee (to help discourgae pirates).

I agree, there should be a choice for the creators. Personally, I'd want the LG game to be free for all, not only cuz that would mean no one makes money from our product, but also cuz "free is better".. goes for most things in live.. booze, sex.. VD's. You get my point.

What most people are missing is that this is great for the health of the INDUSTRY. EA and others have basically said that garage studios are dead and only devs tied to big publishers will be able to make games that reach a lot of people. This helps nuture the next generation of game developers in a way that has NEVER been done before.

Maybe it may not affect you directly, as you may never spend much time with these or any time. But its great for the health of the industry (Sony and Nintendo included) and that's something that ALL gamers should truly celebrate.

The excitement of this for indie devs is that now they have the opportunity to get their games seen by a mass market.

There's no indication yet that developers will be allowed to sell their games over this service.

This sucks. This is all they have? So I get to pay to play ametuer games on XBOX Live. Wait, that doesn't sound fun at all... And I can play it on my Zune! With two buttons and a d-pad. Not to troll, but this seems like a blatant rip-off of LittleBigPlanet, and not even a good one.

I guess the attraction to XNA and creating games to put on XBLA is that if a lot of people download it Microsoft well pay you to make more games?

Spend the time to read up before posting all the negativity: [forums.xna.com]

This is a tough crowd. Did someone come in and insult everyone's mothers before I can in?

This is great news. Developers currently planning to release games on Xbox live have to get their game approved by MS. I see this as a new avenue that says "My game gets 1000s of downloads and is highly rated. I don't care that you don't think my game will sell, but plenty of fans do want it." You don't have to try everything, just like there is tons of crap in a video store or on marketplace. Even established developers can take a limited risk on ideas and release it as a demo to see who gamers like it. Imagine if Clover Studios was in business now? They could have demos on XBL and PSN, or now try some of their "riskier" ideas out to get more funding. Now they are folded into the rest of the company.

Great idea, at least it will give me the possibility to "publish" a console game, and do something more useful with my XNA subscription.

My only major concern is quality control.. I do hope so they only "publish" games that actually work. But my guess is the $99 a year subscription will probably work like a filter to get rid of nonsense content.

Exactly, This conference is for Game Developers (Game Developers Conference?) not you, the consumer. This is an extremely exciting announcement for aspiring game developers.

@DMeisterJ: XNA was released before LBP.

@DMeisterJ: You know, every game developer need to start somewhere. Being an amature does not meen being bad or sucky or anything else for the mater, the games can even be much better then things you buy already for your cash.

There is many good games made by XNA so far. Saying it's a blant ripoff of LittleBIgPlanet is a darn joke, do you seriously have a clue what XNA is ?.

"Starting today"

Yeah, but when today? :-)

This is great! We'll be seeing way more free games on XBLA soon it sounds like.

@L_K_M: Demos are up right now.

I think a lot of people here have the wrong idea of indy development. There's a lot of people who do indy development in their spare time that have years of experience in the industry. This is an amazing opportunity for developers. This also has nothing to do with little big planet, that is a physics sandbox. This allows for actual game development on the 360 platform.

@L_K_M: there is a free launcher on the Marketplace.

Navigate to New Arrivals -> Games -> XNA Creator's Club. After you download that, you can use the "twist" menu to select the games you want to download. I'm down for some Dishwasher action!

I'm psyched for this. It lets the homebrew and garage folks get their work out to a bigger audience. If the games are of quality, the community will bolster them.

I find it humorous that people are complaining about...I don't know...PAYING for games that people worked on. My guess is that the free PC stuff you're enjoying is either pirated, comes with adware, or is slowly bankrupting said indie developer for paying to develop and host the software with no appreciable return.

Get a clue.

This is the first real step in user-made content on consoles. Making maps and mods is great, but crafting an original game from the ground up and getting distribution with the potential for income is enormous. Nice job, MS.

So how soon before somebody creates a game that either has a bug or purposely can format the HD? :)

@Kilbe, @peacefuloutrage: Thanks, checking it out right now! And... it's downloaded! I'm off playing games, guys. Bye! :-)

Too bad you still have to pay a subscription to play/test on the 360.

It seems that the portability to/from PC to 360 is fairly solid, so theoretically, you could build the complete game on PC and port. I haven't paid MSFT $100 to do work, I don't know how streamlined it is.

Seems to me the only new feature is that the community can play.

OMG! (heavy breathing! /faints)

@figurhead: Converting a PC game to XBox 360 is as easy as:

- Right click your project, select "Create copy of project for Xbox360"
- Select your Xbox360 as publish target and hit the run button

So building it on a PC first is a great idea if you aint sure what you want to do with it.

playing dishwasher now...its HOT!!!

Little gamers is fun as fuck

thanks ^^

@MrFancyPants: ah ha ha your blaming MS for people cussing? way to stereotype too. very intelligent

What kind of jaded fanboy do you have to be to hate on this announcement so much? flOw and desktop tower defense were both indy games and they were great. I expect a ton of really crappy games, but if there's a gem once a year or so then isn't it worth it?

This sounds cool. I have fond memories of snagging little Yaroze games for the PS1, like that puzzle game that yelled "YEE-HAW" after you cleared a line.

Yeah, this is an amazing thing. I don't understand the hate at all.

I'm pretty psyched about this. I don't see how this could be bad for the consumer, and for developers, this is really what I always imagined XNA should be like. Well, I guess there's always the possibility that people try to sneak malicious code on there. Not sure what the safeguards are; I haven't taken a look at XNA myself, and the website just seems to have peer review as a catch-all solution. Waiting for more details I guess?

Holy crap, you mean, we'll have to pay for something that someone put their hard work and sweat into? And, to pay for the bandwidth and hosting if we want to play it? Geez, what's next? We have to pay for food and water?

Oh, wait ...

too much bullshit to go through to get to the games.

This is a great announcement, I was hoping for this from the beginning.

All you haters really have no concept of what XNA is and what MS is doing. This is an announcement for *game developers*, and is huge. This is the first time no-name garage devs have a real shot of getting their game on a major console system. Sure, you can go to NewGrounds, and play a bunch of crappy Flash games for free, but they sure as hell don't have the graphics of the Xbox360.

In simple terms, this means there will be a ton of probably *FREE* original titles to download and play on XBLA. These games will likely be more innovative than 90% of the "Tour of Duty: Badge of Honor 23" WWII clones and other such crap the major publishers seem to think we like. This could be the YouTube of games everyones been talking about.