I will certainly check it out. Thanks Kotaku!

No no no no...silverlight can go f-off, me on linux. And this sound alot like that Sims Carnival site..?

I wonder whether they're going to create something similar so users can create XBLA games.

That'd be cool!

This is just more garbage designed to ram Silverlight down your throats and usurp Flash, in a pathetic attempt to create yet more vendor lock-in. Don't bother.

Linux is great and all but you get what you pay for. As a paying Microsoft customer I would rather see the money I spend goto the development of software for paying customers. Freeloaders can go elsewhere.

pop... fly?

Silverlight? Urgh, there goes all my positive comments.

@Rickster: POP-cap + game-FLY? Looked weird to me too :|

"but hey, who said everything on this world had to be perfect?"

when it's something that sony's doing......

sorry, playing GTA4 all night and having to go to work soon has me cranky.

@db2: Yeah, thank god there's open source initiatives like flash that gives you free tools to create with! O_o

Look, I'm not a big Silverlight fan but am even less of a fan of unchallenged monopolies. Listen, don't forget that regardless of who it is, Google, Microsoft, Apple, or even Sun, when it's all said and done, they want you using as much of their stuff as possible. If you think their's companies out their with your best interest in mind then you've been deceived already.

@okenny :): I'd incredibly rather a flash monopoly than a Silverlight one - at least Flash doesn't force you into a specific OS - which is the whole point of Silverlight.

What is Sliverlight?

@okenny :): Well, if you're interested in open source Flash tools, you can head to [osflash.org] to find things like compilers and IDEs.

Sure, companies want you to use their stuff, and benefit from you doing it - but that's true even for individuals. When you look at the specifics, though, Microsoft just isn't a good company to hand control to. IE dragged its feet when it came to web standards, and OOXML is a dumpsite of Word-specific rules and general confusion when it comes to being a document filetype.

Other companies, such as Sun, and Adobe, at least know that everyone can benefit by opening up a bit, and allowing others to write tools and patches that build on what they've written. And, the challenge to Flash comes just fine from things like Java, proce55ing, and XULRunner.

@Snappywave: Kinda like Adobe Flash, except its Microsoft so its quite err...restrictive.

@okenny :): Don't forget all the extra features 64bit flash player gives.

@OgdenShire:
Yes,that would be nice.

@OgdenShire: That's kind of what XNA is. Granted XNA is a lot more code intensive, but it is still a relatively easy way to get into game development. Garage Games has the Torque 2D game builder for XNA which is similar in concept to this.

As a developer, this is really cool to see. MS has been given individuals a lot of great game development tools these past few years. People complain that they are too restrictive, but as it is, the 360 is the only console that allows users to put their own games on it without hacking.

@okenny :): I never said Flash was perfect, but the fact that it runs fine on Windows, OS X, and Linux (and possibly others) makes it a hell of a lot more cross-platform than Silverlight.

So people hate silverlight because..why? I'm downloading this and playing with it despite everyone's retarded comments. Fuck y'all.

@okenny :):
I was thinking something more like this when I saw it and its silverlight badness.
They take a swing and hit the ball, ohhh its a Popfly out to center and they are out!

I have tried to access a example, and this is the result:

"Microsoft Popfly Welcome to Popfly!
You must sign in to see this content.

Sign in to Windows Live ID
Microsoft Popfly doesn't support your browser at this time

Please use Internet Explorer 6.0 (32 bit) or newer, or Firefox 2.0 or newer to access Popfly.
Learn More
©2007 Microsoft"

So seems you need a 32 bits browser. How 90's!

@db2: Dude, if anyone manages to make an entertaining game with it, would you really give a damn if you had to run Silverlight to play it? who cares? it's just another stupid web plugin that you install once in your browser and then forget about forever.

@freakout: As I understand it you can't run Silverlight if you don't have Vista - so for many people, it /isn't/ that easy.

@Achenar: Whoops, scratch that - that's only for developing, I guess? O.o

Man Microsoft are really pumpin silverlight, every time i go on MSDN I get asked to download it.

I'm a web developer and I've been looking at Silverlight as it has integration with .NET but just like flash i don't think it should be used on a website, until they can fix Accessibility issues for impaired users my hands are kinda tied.

@Aprocalypse: Silverlight is also available on the Macintosh.

@Achenar: Well, you understood wrong. Silverlight is also available for XP.

Hahahaha...Space Boy kinda cracks me up, mainly because of your character's death animation. And I must say that I'm appalled that the performance of Save the City whenever you shoot a ton of missiles. I mean, here are my specs: 3.01GHz Athlon 64 X2, 768MB GeForce 8800GTX, 4GB RAM. Should I really have issues running Save the City when I can run pretty much any game in existence on PC at the highest possible detail?

I like Silverlight, but its viability as a gaming platform has just been shaken. If the performance is improved, then I'd love to mess around with Silverlight in the future.

I think most people complaining about Silverlight need to quiet down. I installed it ages ago to view the banjo website, it wasn't a big deal back then, it still isn't now.

@Kinsman:
As much as I tend to agree on silverlight (but seriously, let them try), I'd have to disagree on the fact that adobe is more open.

The pdf reader is free, but to make a pdf you have to shell out big bucks (or use an open source alternative). The same with all their tools. Try getting a decent open source alternative for flex (adobe's 'silverlight). The sdk is free, but the builder costs 250 dollars.

The point here is not 'company x sucks', rather that they all are companies and try to make money. If microsoft has a new format, it is normal that they try to force it on you. Don't like it? Don't install it :p.

You even pay for your google services. I'm a big google fanboy, but they don't charge you cash, they charge you privacy. Every service you use gives them more information. And information equals money too.

Now back to the topic: While this is a bit cool, I'd rather see an update of the xna framework. Maybe so it will finally work with vs2008, and not only with these express editions.

gameboy camera?!

Well SilverLight won't work with my Firefox Portable Edition so I'll ignore it.

But that said popfly revived an repressed memory of a game idea from my Amiga days.

So are there any alternatives for making a browser based game?

@Rhuno: "the 360 is the only console that allows users to put their own games on it without hacking"...What? If your referring to XNA then your being misleading, since you still need to pay MS for the privilege. And technically(or is this your hacking?) Linux will run just fine on PS3 so...you know...games on a PS3 on Linux?

@GingerMohawk: That wont be for a VERY long time, people are bad enough making basic sites accessible, let alone the effort it would take to bring a Flash site up to standard.

To summarize the comments: Free stuff is good, unless it is from Microsoft, which makes it evil.

Monopolies are bad unless they are NOT Microsoft, which make them cool like Google and Adobe?

Did I get it right?

@hoos30: Near enough. Microsoft does have the most abusive monopoly, but that doesn't make everyone else automatically right. Just better. Google are surprisingly good considering their size, and adobe are hardly a monopoly, they just make a good product. Apple, on the other hand, are darn right bad for the computing industry. Wait 5 years, they'll be the new Microsoft.

I don't understand all the nay-saying towards Silverlight... which is a cross-platform standard based on XAML. There aren't restrictions associated with Silverlight, as there ARE with flash. For one, Microsoft provides Visual Web Developer for free whereas Adobe Flash is not.

Silverlight is an excellent revolution to highly graphical, lightweight, and deep online apps. Try to avoid making assumptions because you hate Microsoft.

Just say no to Silverlight. Flash ain't perfect, but is at least now open. Neither should be used on websites to any large degree, but at least Flash operates on far more hardware.

Not to mention that it took them nearly a -year- to fix a silly bug that prevented nforce users from controlling the volume from silverlight videos.

Keep things in perspective. People like to use what they're used to. Anything is the "best" and "easy to use" if you know how to use it. You still have people screaming that COBOL is the greatest because that's all they've ever known. If people like Silverlight then people will support Silverlight. Remember that all early Flash stuff was just flashy crap on web-pages that annoyed the hell out visistors and slowed down browsing, but people dug Flash games and Flash is what it is today.

On a side note, Flash is not some single executable that "just works" on any platform. Each platform has to have a special plug-in or installer to make it work. The same is true of any browser plug-in and in most case, it has taken years or close to a decade for that plug-in to even work correctly to the point where a web install is seamless. Nothing in the computer world "just works". If you're an IT guy and you believe in the "just works" mantra, then I feel sorry for your employers.

@Tepoz: In short for whatever new tool that's introduced, try it and see if helps you in doing your job or not. If it doesn't or the requirement to switch is cost prohibitive, then don't.

It's a fairly simple concept: Use what works and what works consistently.

Popfly is actually the name of an existing Microsoft online platform that supposedly lets you add widgets and what not to your ASP.NET site via integration with Visual Studios.

It sucks.

I use both Flash and Sliverlight and truthfully as I'm not a developer I can't actually see the difference between them and they both work so hey who cares?

I love game making software, when it's robust. When there's a community for this and people have gotten beyond the "Breakout Clone" stage, I'd certainly take a look.

I must have been the only one who read that as "Poopfly."

@John-irl: I would say that's not misleading at all: the 360 is the easiest and most convenient way for small development teams or individuals to get their games on a current gen game console. Good luck getting support from Sony when you make that homebrew linux game.

I still don't get what the point is when Flash can do all that stuff but better. The performance of Silverlight is horrible, even for an alpha/beta or whatever its supposed to be. If it properly supported graphic hardware that would be one thing, but this plug-in is a dog!

@John-irl: From what I've read they don't give you access to all of the hardware on the PS3. Is this still true? A game without hardware acceleration these days isn't such a great idea most of the time.

@Aprocalypse:
@db2:
@John-irl:

I hate to break it to you three and others in this commenting thread, but Silverlight is available for Windows XP/Vista, Mac OS X, and Linux. If you want to hate on Microsoft, then at least do it correctly and intelligently - thanks!

Thanks for the heads-up on this Kotaku, I will check it out, but I will probably stick to XNA as it is more robust and I know programming well enough to use it. Popfly sounds better for when I have less time to work on something.

@Lstormy10:

And thank you for bringing some respect to this comments page.

@Lstormy10: When someone mentioned Silverlight to me earlier this year, I'm almost entirely sure that I researched it, and it said it was only available on Vista and in Internet Explorer. Maybe I looked at old information, or something, but that's the information I was working on.

(Also, Microsoft didn't release it at all for Linux, though I guess you could call it available through a third party, on an earlier version?)

Taking a look at Wikipedia, maybe that was version 2.0 or some such? I don't know... but that was what I got from looking around earlier this year

So, yay for being wrong... but please don't just go around calling people un-intelligent because they have their facts wrong. >_>

[I also guess I'll check this out, now that my only reason not to appears to not even exist. xD]