Indie Game Devs and XNA.

XNA is Microsoft's indie friendly game development package. If you've got an xbox, some basic coding and graphics skills, and a PC, you can get in on the fun of making an xbox game yourself. Over 220 games have been published on xbox so far, and microsoft just released the first quarter sales numbers, which has some games earning upwards of $30k. For relatively quick games made by lone wolf coders or small shops, this isn't half bad. For xbox gamers, the attraction of picking up a game for as little as 200 points(about $2.50) is undeniable. So, what can we expect from this platform in the future?

 

 

First off, lets look at why developers are finding XNA so attractive.

 

Cost. This one is huge, as you can see from the comparison below:

The 2d XNA tutorial application in action

PS3 SDK: $10,250

Wii SDK: $2500

Xbox XNA: $99

 

Now sure, there are ways around purchasing the SDKs, and you can release software that plays on jailbroken hardware, but frankly, that's a rather small market. The advantage to XNA is placement on Xbox Live, which gives developers the one thing they most need, consumer eyeballs. If you've got a fun demo, a good description and images, you should be able to get sales. Microsoft takes 30% of the take for this service, which is comparable with other services such as the Apple iStore. The eula does allow them to take up to 60% if a game is given special promotion, but Microsoft officials have stated that there are currently no plans to take more than 30%.

 

Flexibility. XNA is quite PC friendly, and a game built for xbox can generally be used on PC with only minor control changes in many cases. This makes porting a much more inexpensive endevour, and bears no additional cost. In fact, no purchase whatsoever is required for developing for the PC, as XNA is a free download, as is Visual C# Express. For PC gaming, the flexibility of the .Net suite is a plus for some, allowing for easier integration of languages and components. Unfortunately, C# still doesn't have the game development history C and C++ have, so established studios may not be quick to swap.

 

Ease of Use. Multiple step by step video tutorials are provided, and while a tutorial can never completely replace the depth of knowledge an experienced coder has, it does help ease new developers into game design easier than other popular engines such as Torque or Gamemaker. As developers gain skill, a number of more advanced libraries and tutorials are available from the XNA Creators Club, the Microsoft community for this market. Third party sites with comparable support are rare, but a few have popped up, and more will likely do so as popularity continues to rise. Even the submission process is relatively easy, with only technical testing required. It doesn't matter how bad the actual game is, as long as it avoids anything flagrantly wrong like crashing routinely, it should get passed.

 

 

 

The Games. While developers are relatively pleased with all of these developments, it's not all good news for microsoft, as gamers have criticized some aspects of the Community Games system. For one, Community Games(those made with XNA) can not include acheivement points, a well known feature of more popular Xbox titles. A more pressing problem is that many of the games are rather poor quality. It appears that making a tool nearly idiot proof isn't always helpful in making quality games. Of course, other venues have similar troubles, with plenty of gripes about games dying from neglect on the istore, or the PS3.

 

 

 

Where is it going? Well, the market will likely see continued low quality games published until the market for them is entirely flooded. Cranking out a reskinned version of pong is quick and easy, and while the market is only so big, you don't really need that much to make it worthwhile. After the easy pickings are claimed though, we should start seeing quality games come out. The biggest problem is likely to be finding them among the hundreds of existing games. Microsoft may have to either tighten standards or better organize this section to keep it useful.