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XNA Creators Club: see your game on XBLA
Announced months ago, the XNA Creators Club officially launched today. Available on Marketplace as a four month subscription for $49 or a yearly subscription at $99, the Creators Club allows programmers of all stripes to share their game ideas over Xbox Live. Subscriptions provide access to game assets, white papers, tech support, and even starter kits for aspiring programmers. Combined with Microsoft's free XNA Game Studio Express, the Creators Club allows almost anyone to create and share their game ideas with the world.In celebration of this ground breaking launch, Microsoft is hosting the "Dream-Build-Play" competition starting this January. Open to all XNA Game Studio Express users and Creators Club members, the winner of the competition will receive a chance to have his or her game published as an Xbox Live Arcade title. We were jazzed about the idea of a community arcade when the Creators Club was first announced, and it seems to be getting closer to fruition. XBLA really is an innovative platform and we hope that lots of people out there (including our readers) will participate in creating some new ideas. Is there anyone out there dabbling in XNA that wants to enter the contest? Send us a link to your game and we'll pimp it to the world. Also, if you'd like to streamline the development process, you might want to sign up for the beta of Garage Games' TorqueX tools.Full press release after the break.
Watch the possibilities of XNA
We found this video on GameTrailers showing off what XNA can do. The video features games of all genres including puzzlers, shooting, and racing. Of course, there are plenty of games that are just prettier versions of games we've been playing since the Atari 2600 (keep your eye out for Combat, Asteroids, and Space War clones). Our programming knowledge is limited (read: nil), but the video shows off some of the XNA interface (probably using Garage Games' Torque X toolset), and it looks about as simple as possible. The Tank Buster game, for example, is made using only a simple drag-and-drop interface. If designing a game really is that simple, XNA has a bright future indeed. Watch the video after the break.
