New XNA FAQs

[AzBat]

New XNA FAQs (UPDATED: Business Model Announced)

Microsoft has updated their XNA site with new FAQs regarding the new XNA features announced today. One FAQ is for the XNA Community Games and the other is for XNA on the Zune. FYI, support for the Zune will come via XNA Game Studio 3.0 which a preview version should be made available this spring.

XNA Community Games FAQ
http://forums.xna.com/thread/46554.aspx

XNA on the Zune FAQ
http://forums.xna.com/thread/46553.aspx

Tommy McClain

 

[Dominik D]

There's also Improved Creators Club Online FAQ. All three available from:
http://creators.xna.com/whatsnew.aspx

 

[FutureCTO]

That's Interesting. As of XNA SDK 3.0, Direct3D's X file type is no longer supported.
Autodesk's FBX file type becomes the only choice. Wonder why?

http://forums.xna.com/46492/ShowThread.aspx#46492

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct3D
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3ds_Max
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3ds_Max_release_history

It's strange. Microsoft moved Office and so many things towards the XML file format. And now they seem to be moving towards the 3ds Max FBX format. Yet they have not joined COLLADA.
http://www.khronos.org/members/promoters
http://www.khronos.org/members/contributors


Some Free Cross Platform Tools
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sketchup
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COLLADA
http://wiki.codesynthesis.com/Schemas/COLLADA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_(software)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MeshLab
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerkythea
http://psinsider.e-mpire.com/index.php?categoryid=3&m_articles_articleid=724

 

[Zeross]

Q: Do I need an XNA Creators Club subscription to make games now?
A: No, but if you want to make the game available on the Xbox LIVE Community Games area, or peer review submitted games, you must be a subscriber.

So if I understand well : before you had to pay a $100 fee just to upload your game and test it on your console, now the subscription is no longer necessary to test your game on your Xbox 360 but you need it to make your game available on the Xbox Live Community, that's right ?

Edit

Those of you that don’t – have no fear! While you are required to have an active XNA Creators Club subscription in order to submit your game for publishing on the Xbox LIVE community games, you can still prototype your game on Windows for free.

Hum I'm afraid I was wrong nothing changes in fact it seems you still need the subscription to develop on the Xbox 360, what's free was already free.

 

[archangelmorph]

So if I understand well : before you had to pay a $100 fee just to upload your game and test it on your console, now the subscription is no longer necessary to test your game on your Xbox 360 but you need it to make your game available on the Xbox Live Community, that's right ?

Edit


Hum I'm afraid I was wrong nothing changes in fact it seems you still need the subscription to develop on the Xbox 360, what's free was already free.

In essence they've provided a platform whereby anyone with a 360 & an XBL gold membership can download and play XNA games submitted by 'creator's club members'.. Before there was no distribution platform & the only way to share XNA games [to play on the 360] was to send to binaries to another creator's club member so that that person would deploy & compile to his 360..

It's the introduction of an open distribution platform that they've announced, the aformentioned 'you-tube of games'..

Can't wait!

 

[Arwin]

So for the Zune, only 2D is supported I see. Well, as long as you can still make 3d games also through this way that are just not compatible with the Zune, I'm fine with that.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Is that a problem? I'm loving the 2D stuff I'm seeing on downloads! It's the 16bit revisited and tarted up. There's 3D galore on full titles that eclipse anything small budgets could achieve, but 2D stuff is now an open playing field where people who once looked at ST and Amiga games with ideas that they'd create can do so in an impressive way.

 

[Arwin]

Did I say it was a problem? I don't give a ^*& about the Zune. Just noting that for games that also run on Zune, you have to stick to 2D. When I was writing for the PSP, I could fairly easily develop on the PC using OpenGL and then move the code to the PSP Homebrew space using PSPGL (as I did in my signature project). This won't be possible on the Zune, that's all. It's very understandable, and I think the whole Zune crossover part isn't going to be all that interesting. You'll probably want to develop separately for PC/360 and Zune, if only to cater for the 320x240 resolution you have available on the Zune, something that is probably more important in 2D even than in 3D.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

What are Zune sales like anyhow? Is it a platform anyone's going to care to target?

 

[MrWibble]

It's strange. Microsoft moved Office and so many things towards the XML file format. And now they seem to be moving towards the 3ds Max FBX format. Yet they have not joined COLLADA.
http://www.khronos.org/members/promoters
http://www.khronos.org/members/contributors

Firstly, Collada was originally a Sony initiative. So no love from Microsoft on that front.

Meanwhile, the format itself has had a pretty painful birth. It's still not pleasant to work with at all. Getting data into or out of it can be a lot of effort, whereas FBX at least has a supported API. For a long time, Collada seemed pretty broken. Lots of things were missing or supported in all kinds of funky ways that didn't translate between software. Standards were vague or just plain wrong. It's getting there now, at least for 3D stuff, but arguments on other parts of the standard are still common and I'm not holding my breath for it.

FBX on the other hand is a closed format, so straight away it's not good if you want to write your own code to handle it, or extend it. Howver it's supported with an API and by the company making two of the most major commercial 3D packages at that. So support should be good.

I'm on the fence - I don't think either side really has it right yet. Ideally Autodesk/Alias would sort out FBX such that it had good Collada support itself, allowing interoperability. You'd get (hopefully) robust support from the 3D packages without the format being closed.

However I don't see a lot of motivation in the people behind these things to sort it all out.

I'll be honest. If I wanted to write an application, I'd probably support both, as well as using a custom format - I doubt I'd want to rely entirely on either. If I was writing a game pipeline, I might have some import capability, but I'd definitely be writing a 3D exporter, as much as I'd really like not to have to do that anymore.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Firstly, Collada was originally a Sony initiative. So no love from Microsoft on that front.

I think it's more a case of being an open, non-MS standard that means they snub it! Although a dropping of their own .x format for someone else's is a surprising change from the norm. It does make absolute sense to support an common industry format though.

 

[Zassk]

What are Zune sales like anyhow? Is it a platform anyone's going to care to target?

Supposedly, it is the #2 in hard disk players (behind Apple), which would mean it bumped Creative from that spot. No idea how well the newer flash Zunes have sold; there were shortages over the holidays (which means nothing).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Wikipedia has it at 1.2 million though that's from a 1.2 million unit announcement in July from their reference, so it's more likely ~2 million I s'pose. And of course it a US only device at the moment. Scope for game development with an eye on Zune seems limited, but may be a good testbed for a future MS portable or extending XNA to mobiles.

 

[Zassk]

A timely article containing a useful stat:

"Within weeks of its release, it outsold other MP3 players to sit number two behind iPod, which leads the pack the way Secretariat led horse races -- by a long shot. Zune has five per cent of the overall MP3 market, which gives you an idea how far it needs to go to seriously threaten the iPod."

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/business/story.html?id=515d0be6-16d7-412b-9e37-bc4af2dc8040

 

[Shifty Geezer]

When they say other MP3 players, do they mean models or makers? For example, Sony have like a half dozen different models with a few variations each. Did Zune outsell all of these on aggregate, or each specific model? Not that that really matters, as it's installed base that's relevant to software development. In terms of game playing portable media players it'll be wrestling with mobiles and PSP and whatever Apple throw out there.

 

[AlphaWolf]

When they say other MP3 players, do they mean models or makers? For example, Sony have like a half dozen different models with a few variations each. Did Zune outsell all of these on aggregate, or each specific model? Not that that really matters, as it's installed base that's relevant to software development. In terms of game playing portable media players it'll be wrestling with mobiles and PSP and whatever Apple throw out there.

1) It's quite probable the numbers are US as that's the only place Zune is sold.
2) Apple has something like 80% of that market
3) I doubt Sony, Samsung, LG or Creative etc etc are doing any better than 5% even taking an aggregate of all their players (by brand) given that there seems to be only about 15% to split between them.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

That's true!

 

[PARANOiA]

A general XNA Creators Club question... the official FAQ tells me to "wait and see" when other countries are invited to join the XNA CC, however this really doesn't fill me with confidence in beginning to build an XNA app with hopes of distribution over Live. Are there any rumoured/non-official expectations for when us lowly Australians (or Europeans or any other part of the world) can expect to be part of this initiative?

If no, I'll be looking for US'ers to help me release my potential game I'm writing up a design draft ATM, with the personal goal being having the name of both myself and a friend working on the game stamped on it to add to my CV. Proceeds aren't top priority, but can you imagine having a game sell to 10,000 people at 400 points or so... that's a decent amount of cash if your game actually hits a small niche crowd... I'm genuinely excited, though I am aware of the stats around the extremely low conversion rate of game ideas into actual games.

Out of interest, there was a great GFW Radio podcast about the subject of turning ideas into games from their GDC series this week. Check out the first one, with Warren Spector and Paul Wedgewood... apparently they couldn't sell the concept of the Sims back in the early '90's because the backers thought it wouldn't sell. . Fast forward to today, and when the idea was picked up later it's now the best selling PC game ever IIRC.

 

[AzBat]

PARANOiA,

You probably will want to communicate with a guy named Glenn Wilson(GamerTag: Mykre). He's also from Melbourne and very active with XNA game development and the community. Check his XNA blog here...

http://www.virtualrealm.com.au/blogs/mykre/

Also, he posts regulary on the XNA Forums here...

http://creators.xna.com/search/SearchResults.aspx?u=2165&o=DateDescending

Evidently you missed an oppurtunity that Glenn put together back last November to meet with Pete Isensee from the global Microsoft XNA team. It was a free informal meet to hear Pete talk about XNA stuff. Maybe they'll put together another one.

Anyway, if anybody knows how to answer any questions with regarding XNA and the Creator's Club in Australia, he'd be the man.

Tommy McClain

 

[PARANOiA]

Thanks! Will read up.