XNA Game Studio 4 is now available for download on Microsoft’s site APP HUB. XNA Game Studio 4 was announced and initially released as a “Community Technical Preview” at GDC on March 9, 2010, and in its final form on September 16, 2010.
What is XNA Game Studio? If you don’t know what is XNA (you probably have guessed a rough idea about it from the preceding paragraph), XNA is a set of tools with a managed runtime environment provided by Microsoft that facilitates computer game development and management. XNA attempts to free game developers from writing “repetitive boilerplate code” (boilerplate is the term used to describe sections of code that have to be included in many places with little or no alteration) and to bring different aspects of game production into a single system.
The XNA toolset was announced March 24, 2004, at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California and has gone through two succeeding versions until its version 4 was released.
The latest version adds support for the Windows Phone 7 platform (including 3D hardware acceleration), framework hardware profiles, configurable effects, built-in state objects, graphics device scalars and orientation, cross-platform and multi-touch input, microphone input and buffered audio playback, and Visual Studio 2010 integration.
With XNA developers can and develop and deploy their games for PC, Xbox, Xbox360 and Windows Phone 7.
Xbox 360 games written in XNA Game Studio can be submitted to the Creators Club community. Where all the submitted games are subjected to peer review by other creators. Upon successful completion of the review process, the game gets listed on Xbox Live Marketplace. A much open and faster review mechanism compared to that of Apple’s App Store. Creators can set a price of 80, 240 or 400 points for their game. The creator is paid 70% of the total revenue from their game sales as a baseline.
It gets more interesting when we look into its licensing terms, gives a clearer idea about Microsoft’s take on the game industry; which we would say is pretty smart.
The Microsoft XNA Framework 2.0 EULA specifically prohibits the distribution of commercial networked games that connect to Xbox Live and/or Games for Windows Live in the absence of a specific agreement signed by both the developer and Microsoft. What this means is that XNA Game Studio can still be used to develop commercial games and other programs for the Windows platform, although Microsoft’s networking support code for Xbox/Windows Live cannot be used. Given the potential of multiplayer-powered games and wide reach of Xbox Live; Microsoft seems to leave room to exercise invisible control over the game developers profit making ability. However, self-developed network code can still be used inside the developer’s XNA project.
It’s a very good sign that now many game engines and studios alike are opening up their SDKs, so that both professional and beginner game developers freely develop their game ideas; atleast giving more people the option to get a taste of game development. Ofcourse more serious game developers will try to sell their games, and that’s where the licensing quirk comes making the profit-share even for both parties (we are not judging whether it is equitable or not, lets for now say it is even).