Homebrew Games

An article from December 2006 discussing Microsoft's XNA Game Studio Express project with which home, amateur developers can make their own XBox Live games.

Console manufacturers normally keep a stranglehold on the games that are developed on "their" machines, and also because they always have final say over whether a professionally finished game can even be released to market. This case is particularly interesting because of the reference to YouTube in this quote,

"It is about sharing games and is envisioned as a YouTube for games," said Andrew Sithers, the academic lead at Microsoft UK.

Perhaps they've finally realised that there are ways to make money from developers without maintaining such a strong grip on authorisation: allow anyone to develop, but ensure that the means of distribution (which they own) still directs revenue to the publisher. I'm still sceptical about how ideologically close their implemention will be to YouTube community model, and I imagine there will be restrictions to what is made available. There are regulatory legal concerns with allowing the public to release content through a commercial channel, as the commercial entity then becomes responsible for that content.

On the other hand it sounds like fun and Microsoft game development tools are generally excellent. I'd be interested in buying an XBox 360 (and a PC to develop on). One concern that I have which is shared by other industry people is with getting new people into the industry. Making games now is much more complicated than when I was a kid in the 80's. You turned the machine on and it just begged to be programmed. You had everything you needed to make games on your own. There wasn't really any difference between amateur and professional developers. My concern is that because there's no imperative for kids to make their own games that will negatively affect potential industry recruits. On the other hand, there's a much greater number of computer owners and users now, we have internet access, the games industry is mainstream, etc.

Swings and roundabouts.