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Microsoft PC Games (Games)

Microsoft Announces XNA Studio 49

Posted by Zonk from the bringing-out-the-big-guns dept.
simoniker writes "Microsoft has announced XNA Studio at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Based on Visual Studio 2005 Team System, XNA Studio is an integrated, team-based development environment tailored specifically for video game development, and will likely launch as a PC retail product early in 2006. Gamasutra has an interview with XNA's Chris Satchell with more details on what Microsoft sees as a solution for ever-expanding cost and complexity in game development."
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Microsoft Announces XNA Studio More

Microsoft Announces XNA Studio

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  • What exactly is new here that Alienbrain doesn't offer? I guess there are those proprietary APIs for XBox Live compatibility and XBox controller polling..

    • Re:So... Alienbrain? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      AlienBrain is shit, slow, and not cost effective. It's a closed system. Its support for binary art resources is poor. It's buggy. Its Visual Studio integration is flimsy. Its licensing is unreasonable.

      We switched back to crappy old Visual SourceSafe, and wrote our own resource management tool which took a few months of programmer hours, and eliminated the cost and annoyance of AlienBrain. Sounds like XNA might enable one to further integrate one's own tools to meet one's unique requirements.
    • Yeah and guess what -- those things alone would probably make it a worthwhile investment for gaming companies today. Nowadays everyone's releasing their games across as many platforms as they can. If this can make it easier for a company to develop games for two of those (arguably two of the most popular), don't you think that makes it worth at least a look?
  • Everyone already knows that XNA is just a fancy name for DirectX10 with even more proprietary lock down than ever. Look, MS...we know you want to own the entire game industry, but it's just not gonna happen. This makes me sad too because the Xbox2 looks like it could be pretty cool (hardware wise), but these kind of tactics are going to turn off everyone but the huge EA's of the world. You want to really "help" the gaming industry? Start working on Open GL instead of Direct3D. Start working on open standard
    • These kind of tactics? You mean the horribly unethical practice of offering the kind of tools developers need at price they don't mind paying? Dude, wake the fuck up. MS isn't doing a goddamned thing the fucking SDL developers aren't doing. They're providing a framework. Why should MS do a damn thing that benefits anyone else? THEY ARE A FUCKING BUSINESS. If people don't want to use XNA, get this, THEY DON'T HAVE TO. I don't see Carmack being forced to use D3D, DO YOU?
    • You want to really "help" the gaming industry? Start working on Open GL instead of Direct3D.

      No troll intended, but how will this help the community? How does DirectX not suit their needs? Sure, using OpenGL would ease portability issues a bit, but portability to _what_? After Loki's demise, I don't think many publishers are keen on linux. Mac? Maybe. Game developers don't use OpenGL on PS2 or GC, so OpenGL doesn't get you anything there.

      I recall that it was fashionable for OpenGL advocates to bash
      • Game developers don't use OpenGL on PS2 or GC, so OpenGL doesn't get you anything there.

        My understanding is that the PS3 will use the embedded version of OpenGL for rendering though. Along with a range of other open standards. Perhaps some of the other consoles will follow suit too.
    • XNA isn't DX 10, WGF is. At least flame the right technologies, moron.

  • XNA is not the solution (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    A made a lot of games with just a text editor and CVS. Even for next generation games, there is more of a strain on the artists's packages, like Maya or MAX, then on the development IDE.
    This is most likely just some thing to sell to managers, who have no idea how game development works.
    And that is the core of the problem: If you want next generation games to success, hire GOOD managers and produces. And good designers. And keep everyone else the F out of the decision making process. It is not enough to prom

  • This is just a market strike (Score:3, Informative)

    by the_skywise ( 189793 ) on Monday March 07, 2005 @04:26PM (#11869740)
    VS .NET 2005 has implemented all sorts of bells and whistles for "collaborative" development which hasn't been getting much traction in the beta tests and this is just a respin of that to try to make it "sex-ay".

    C'mon, when the marketspeak says:
    "In answering this question, Satchell makes it clear that, while XNA Studio runs on Windows for development purposes, there's no reason why any exported data shouldn't be used anywhere, much as Visual Studio data can be compiled for many purposes. However, Microsoft has built or is building more tools closer to the run-time end of the business to give XNA Studio users significant ease in building content for Microsoft platforms, because exported XNA Studio data can be specifically designed to work with these tools."

    That's standard Microspeak for "Yeah, .NET can run on any platform just like COM could."

    While this isn't a bad thing, the reality is that it would be FASTER to develop on a platform where the API's were open and the tools put out open and WELL DOCUMENTED file formats that anyone could make tools in the tool chain for.
    • I think you are looking at XNA Studio from the wrong angle. I don't think it is so much a platform to offer APIs and code (although it may very well come with some of this) as much as it is a platform that offers a way for a whole team to collaborate on a game. I would imagine that most game studios develop on Windows despite what platform they plan to release on. I don't see why you couldn't use XNA Studio to develop a PS2 game. I've used Visual Studio and it doesn't force you to use Microsoft's APIs.

  • Microsoft Money (Score:1, Insightful)

    by iced_773 ( 857608 )
    Expect to pay through the roof for this, just like everything else Microsoft offers:
    • Visual Studio .Net Professional 2003 - $528.66
    • Office 2003 Standard UPGRADE - $228.59
    • Windows XP Professional w/ SP2 - $308.77
    • Switching to Linux [linuxiso.org]/OpenOffice [openoffice.org]/Something from SourceForge [sourceforge.net] - priceless

    All prices from CDWG [cdwg.com]

  • XNA (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Scott7477 ( 785439 ) on Monday March 07, 2005 @09:04PM (#11872755) Homepage Journal
    I'd like to see more games based on innovative concepts or gameplay rather than just having better graphics so the sword you are wielding in SoulCalibur 9 has glints of light that look more realistic. I think it is strange that the Myst concept hasn't resulted in more games like that. Personally, the attraction of Myst for me was less the puzzle solving than the attractive visual design, the music, and the story telling.

    My point here is that I don't care that MS has started pushing their game writing system. As long as the console business is based on the blockbuster concept borrowed from Hollywood we're going to continue to get more of the same.

    • Re:XNA (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ZephyrXero ( 750822 )
      "As long as the console business is based on the blockbuster concept borrowed from Hollywood we're going to continue to get more of the same."

      This is very very true. This is also why I see PC games making a big comeback as it becomes easier and easier for small teams to put together high quality indy games with open source tools. As big game companies grow larger, they will continue to get worse.

  • Quite an interesting development (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Capt'n Hector ( 650760 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @12:32AM (#11874305)
    However, we are still anxiously awaiting a deathmatch-based development environment. Teams are great and all, but one "TKer" can spoil the entire experience. As a programmer, I prefer to work alone. Some idiot will always mess up the plan, be it with bad warthog driving or malformed code.
  • I just want one game.. this one: Microsoft Crash Demo [microsoft.com]

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