Microsoft has revealed that it is on its way to develop Xbox 360 player-created video games which will be available for download through the next-gen console’s Xbox Live service.
Slated to release in the holiday season of 2008, with its launch the Xbox 360’s game library will close to double, with approx. 1,000 games within a year’s time.
At a San Francisco conference, John Schappert, the vice president of gaming at Microsoft stated, “The time has come for the games industry to open its doors to all game creators, enabling anyone to share their creations with the world.”
Game creators need to employ Microsoft’s XNA Game Studio software, in order to have a self-created game distributed on the Xbox Live application. Microsoft’s XNA Game Studio software is available at a subscription of $99 per year. The other option is that gamers could become an XNA Creators Club member and be eligible to distribute their respective games on the service. In addition, all XNA Creators Club members will be allowed to test a beta version of this service in the spring of this year.
Each and every game that is submitted will be scrutinized to check the quality and suitability by the online community itself.
In addition, Microsoft also maintained that game developers do not have to only and only develop games for the 360 platform but can also go ahead and create come for Microsoft’s Zune digital media player.
What’s more, thanks to Microsoft, students will also receive free access to the company’s XNA Game Studio 2.0, which is the 360-maker’s newest version of its video game development program.