First Xbox 360 Community Games to hit Live "immediately"
By Nilay Patel 
posted Feb 20th 2008 5:04PM
posted Feb 20th 2008 5:04PM
Update: We just tried downloading RocketBall and the process is totally different than you'd expect. First you have to download the XNA Launcher, which is under New Arrivals in the Marketplace blade -- but you don't need a membership, so skip that, and the XNA ad that displays points you to the wrong thing, so ignore that as well. Then head over to the Games blade and select Games Library, but don't open the Launcher, cause it'll just kick you out. Instead, press Y to view the list of games and download one. So far the "YouTube of games" seems a bit convoluted -- hopefully the next Dashboard update makes this all a bit simpler.
- "JellyCar." Created by Walaber from the United States, this game is about driving a squishy car through squishy worlds, trying to reach the exit.
- "Little Gamers." This is a 2-D high definition action side-scroller based on the famous Web comic "Little Gamers" created by Loic Dansart, a 24-year-old software developer from Belgium.
- "The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai." An intense 2-D action platform game created by James Silva from the United States, "The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai" has a unique, highly stylized look and fast and fluid action.
- "TriLinea." This puzzle game created by Edison S. Prata Jr., Renato Pelizzari da Silva and Davi da Silva Prata from Brazil mixes fast-paced action with strategy.
- "RocketBall." Created by Tyler Wanlass, Patrick Murty and Todd Barrons of the United States, this neighborhood game of dodgeball explodes onto the street with fast-paced multiplayer action.
- "ProximityHD." This game, created by Brian Cable from the United States, takes the essence of strategy games -- battles for control of territory and armies -- and distills it down to a simple, easy-to-understand set of rules for casual players.
- "Culture." Created by independent game development company Hidden Path Entertainment from the United States, "Culture" contains challenging games and puzzles based on beautiful flowers.
Hmm where and how do I download these from my 360?
N/m foudn it, went to the Games blade and there was a banner for XNA
Now it's gone, this is frustrating.
*Xbox 360 HDD Required* Download the XNA Creators Club Game Launcher in order to play the special preview selection of game demos created by the community using XNA Game Studio. When your download is complete, go to the Games Library, select My Games, and navigate to the XNA Creators Club category along the top. From there, press Y to view, download, and play the available trial games for this limited period.
Great, now XNA is telling me I need to buy a membership to try it out.. WTF
I know they're all kind of justified, but an hexa-post?
@ Darkest Daze
Don't you mean penta-post?
Actually, one is Greek, the other Latin.
Crap, you're right, I just wasn't paying attention. Plus I was double wrong AND double posted.
I'm going to bed.
This is all putting LIVE even further ahead of PSN... I'd like to see the response from the PS3 crowd or even if Sony plans on doing something comparable.
Let's see if we are still playing these games in 6 months time. I can play these types of games on my pc which I can take anywhere. My 360 is for proper games like COD4 and while these games might be novel now they don't sell consoles.
"Update: We just tried downloading RocketBall and the process is totally different than you'd expect. First you have to download the XNA Launcher, which is under New Arrivals in the Marketplace blade -- but you don't need a membership, so skip that, and the XNA ad that displays points you to the wrong thing, so ignore that as well. Then head over to the Games blade and select Games Library, but don't open the Launcher, cause it'll just kick you out. Instead, press Y to view the list of games and download one. So far the "YouTube of games" seems a bit convoluted -- hopefully the next Dashboard update makes this all a bit simpler."
Farther ahead indeed....
dumb ass this is a blatant rip off of Little Big Planet , which was has been announced for quite some time
@Richard: Saying that is like saying WiiWare is a ripoff of Home. LittleBigPlanet is ONE GAME. This is a FEATURE which lets people publish their OWN games.
@Richard
Little Big Planet is a blatant rip off of Garry's Mod so shut your pie hole.
@Richard
Hey dude pull your head out of Sony's ass for a minute and try to get that pea brain of yours wrapped around what's on offer here instead of spouting off like the Hockey helmet wearing, drooling Corky that you are. Now go away, I'm done with you.
This is probably a defensive reflex when they got burned when HD-DVD sunk. I can imagine all of their HD-DVD drives sitting in a warehouse. Ouch!
P.S: I haven't jumped Next Generation gaming yet, but I will get a PS3 for sure. Because Spyro will be released there this year! Yay!
this has been in the planning for quite some time
this probably isn't even close to a response to HD-DVD, considering it has absolutely nothing to do with HD media. This is all about giving Joe Schmo the opportunity to put their warez out for the world to see and enjoy, and maybe get discovered in the process. Take your napalm somewhere else, flameboy.
Spyro really, Well welcome to the 90's
Dude, they announced this at GDC (this week) and XNA has been available since last year. This was planned a very long time ago
I actually physically shook me head as a sign of my distaste when I read your comment.
There are too many flaws in what you said to list but I guess the primary one would be:
What in the hell does the xbox 360 HD DVD drive have to do with this? At all?
It bears about as much weight and relevance to this news post as a 0.1 micro gram transjender jalapeno ice skating on a thimble.
And that just dont make sense at all does it?*
*If it does, seek therapy... in fact I can reccommend a great therapist :)
Yes, because Microsoft got completely damaged by HD DVD failing...
Oh no, HDi is not going to be part of the next format.
I'm sure, Microsoft is really devastated over the outcome and is thinking about selling pieces of itself to Apple, Sony and everyone else.
It's not like Microsoft makes Billions on Operating systems or anything.
Never drink and post
And I realize I offended a ton of people here. I'm Sorry.
Uh no, I've been a part of the XNA community for awhile and we've been asking for this for a long time and this has been in the works since XNA was released. It's not like they just came up with it overnight in response to HD DVD.
Which on a quick related side note I've been able to get about $300 worth of HD DVD's for around $80!
My apologies fly out to people who were burned by my own stupid "misfirings." I should be doing my homework now, but I must put this in the right way. I admit that comment was really really stupid, but we did stupid things in our life, right?
@disciple83
Ok, I am so sorry If I burned you. Maybe I just didn't like M$ for their Vista which pained me.
@Eric H
Spyro it is. It has been my favorite since I was young. More like comparing older people when they first played the Atari 2600's Pitfall, Pole Position and others. It kinda brings me back when the world was easy. Of course you have a really old game that you like and want to get back to, brings back memories when the world was young and you don't have much problems. Right?
@Esat
Sorry... *Sigh...* You just reminded me of my therapy since I was Grade 2. In fact, I moved out of my country to start a new life. But I'll take that lightly. :)
As to the guests who just clicked the "-" button, I'm really sorry for my comment. I guess I don't really feel ok right now. Okay, back to my homework...
I feel it necessary to forgive you on behalf of all Engadgeteers. I'm sure no one meant to make you feel anything less than okay. Cheer up, delete Vista and install Ubuntu. :)
@Raheem
Well, Thanks, very very much.
I have tried Damn Small Linux on my old laptop, and it works as just an internet browser. Jumping from Vista to Ubuntu may take some time.
Damn. I thought this was going to be like "guilds" for games. Oh well. Cool idea, though.
I downloaded and tried all of 'em, and you can already see which will be going to Zune by seeing the control scheme, like the ones that make you use the back button to exit you can tell will be on the Zune.
I love that the XNA games are based on .Net, makes it easy to get started. unfortunatly that also means you don't get direct access to the machines hardware (but then again, that may also be good in that the games that the community write will be some what sandboxed and restricted from doing unfriendly things to my system).
you only need a membership if you want to be able to copy games that you write from your PC to your 360. It's about $99/year, which is fairly cheap as far as game development licenses go (especially when you consider all the software needed is free!).
I'm sorry, but that is just too much. I wanted to try it out. I am a C# developer, so I figured I could give it a shot. But I don't want to pay money just to try to play my half-assed games on my xbox. Just not worth it, IMO. But if it is to you, more power to you, and hope you make a great game one day.
It does not cost anything to play. It only cost to have access to the remot debugging/deployment capabilities. If you just want to start learning just create a new XNA project and select PC as your target instead of the Xbox 360. The programming interface will be the same, you can still use the xbox 360 controllers, the aspect ratio on the screen will be the same. Diving right in and paying $99 before you have acquired sufficient knowledge and skill with the XNA framework would not be wise.
Thanks for mentioning that. I have just started programming and this looked like a good idea. I'll wait until I can actually do something important then pay $100 and get into that.
no netflix announcement? sadddd
WHERE ARE THE XboxLive MMPORPG's?
they have FFXI and phantasy staruniverse already that i know of.
Yes! I've always wondered about that. Why aren't there any MMPORPGs? Surely they would sell buy the truck load. Maybe they don't think you average WoW player uses a console much... to busy playing WoW i spose, o and on engadget obv lol.
"Of course, as we've heard, games can move from the 360 to PCs to second-gen Zunes"
Nilay, you should not rely upon the PS3 fans/360 haters for your information and writing incorrect posts. From the FAQ on http://forums.xna.com/ShowThread.aspx?PostID=46553
Q: Will this feature only work on newer Zune devices?
A: XNA Game Studio 3.0 currently will support Zune 4/8, Zune 30, and Zune 80 devices.
Notice the Zune 30. It is second gen firmware, but the first gen hardware will run the games.
Too bad it's not free...
Um, it is free.
well these games today are not free, because they are full XBLA titles from the XNA DreamBuildPlay contest. but XNA Community games will be free, unless the creator wishes to sell the game (not an option at this time)
17 days is it to play, done after that, these are TRIALS... they never said that it will be an ongoing thing as well. My guess is that it's a way to sell XNA subscriptions to get more, full games and the added features.
no it's a prelude to the new dashboard update that will support the community based reviewing of the games as well as commenting and such, if you hadn't noticed the "launcher' as it is now is missing the ability to "flag" games or complain that they break copyrights or that they have nudity etc... hence the reason the games are gimped right now and the run around through a launcher instead of direct in the dashboard.
followed engadget's instructions...no problem...am about to start a game of JellyCar.....yayy!!!
Instructions worked for me too. Little Gamers is pretty cool.
Yep, instructions worked for me too. Played JellyCar, pretty fun game.
@ sora: just cause its a feature and not one game doesn't mean its not a rip off. its the idea of it
Another nice live addition, just a pity that MS refuses to launch Live in South Africa. I have the bandwidth and I have the money, yet I need to purchase my subscription from an online shop, as I can't do it from my console. I also cannot download half of what is on marketplace, as it is not available in my lcoation. This two years after MS said that should launch in a few months, after they settle matters with Telkom.
We can logon, we can play arcade games, jippeee, we just can't play online due to lack of support and servers in SA. Thanks MS, once again showing you don't really care about SA
oh i'm pumped about this!
we've only been waiting... ohh? a year and a half for this!
Hmm..
"YouTube" of video games, huh? This could be a bad thing.
I mean, for every game that's a "Chocolate Rain" or "Chad Vader" or "Dramatic Chimpmunk" will there be a few dozen impostes, parodies of the originals, and just plain rip-offs? And even though we may get a "Star Wars Kid" every now and then, we may also get a "2 Girls 1 Cup" and all the reactions to go with it.
I worry.
Always a possibility, but I'm willing to make the tradeoff to find those few hidden gems. The alternative is to leave it to larger developers and their extended schedules/massive marketing machines to feed me mostly what I've been playing for years. If XNA can bring more creativity and innovation to the console gaming space, I'm willing to give it a try even if it only happens in one out of every 100 games that gets posted to the system.
Hopefully, like YouTube and other user-generated content sites, the cream will be recognized quickly by the user community and rise to the top, helping you avoid having to play too many bad games. But in the end, it's a game. You download it. You try it for free. If you don't like it, stop playing it and try something else. A few hours spent doing that could be more enjoyable than spending another few hours playing the same old games on the console, particularly during the dry months (read: generally all months outside of the Fall).
If only we could communicate with retards...............
Looks like Areae has competition now:
http://metaplace.com/
I had been wanting to try JellyCar for awhile now!