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You think you’ve got what it takes to make good Xbox games?
Then Microsoft’s “Xbox LIVE Community Games” is the solution that users have
been waiting for.
In a keynote address at the Gamefest 2008 Microsoft Game
Technology Conference, Chris Satchell, chief technology officer at Microsoft’s Interactive
Entertainment Business Group, revealed new plans for the XNA Creators Club which will
allow users to actively take part in the multibillion-dollar-a-year console
gaming business.
As Satchell pointed out, Microsoft is not only democratizing
the game development with the Xbox LIVE Community Games, but it is also
creating opportunities for aspiring developers. This “will no doubt act as an
incentive for game creators to continue to develop the best, most innovative
games for Xbox 360.”
Community games that have past the peer-review system will
be added to the Xbox LIVE Marketplace, Microsoft revealed, which basically
means consumers will be able to purchase them for preset retail prices ranging
from 200 to 800 Microsoft Points. This way, developers will receive 70 percent
of the revenue generated by the games they’ve created.
Microsoft expects from the Xbox LIVE Community Games, after
it will be launched this fall, to double the size of the Xbox 360 video game
library, which by the end of the year should reach over 1,000 Community Games,
Xbox Arcade and retail blockbuster titles.
Since its launch in 2006, The XNA Game Studio has been
downloaded over 1 million times, and had been adopted in over 700 universities,
said Boyd Multerer, general manager of XNA, adding that the “incredible
creative community … unleashed worldwide” is 25 times larger than the community
of professional developers in the industry.
In addition to all that, Microsoft is also hosting the
second annual Dream-Build-Play game development contest for XNA Game Studio projects,
with prizes totaling $70,000 and the opportunity to sign an Xbox LIVE Arcade
publishing contract for the winner.
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