48-hour publication time for XNA games

By Robert Purchese Published 20 October, 2008

All part of the NXE community games bit.

Microsoft expects submissions to the NXE Community Games Channel to be cleared for download in just 48 hours.

That's according to XNA team member Kathleen Sanders, who joined Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb in an online video preview for the upcoming service.

The Community Games Channel theoretically allows anyone to make a game for Xbox 360 by using the XNA Game Studio 3.0 software. And those tools go live on 30th October.

Once created and submitted the projects will go through to "Peer Review", where other developers will rate and eventually clear the game for release on Xbox Live.

Creators can also charge for their games, although earnings will be calculated in US dollars and subject to taxes there.

Those interested should pop over to the XNA Creators Club Online website, where a handy list of tips - "Best Practices" - can be found. Quite an interesting read if you ask me.

The New Xbox Experience will go live on 19th November.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (14) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Dizzy #1 3 years ago

    Wow... with 1000 games in the pipeline this could be a revolution in gaming. Let's just hope that a few are really good ones ;)

  • Vice.Destroyer #2 3 years ago

    I hope that this is not taken as a pure fanboy comment, but I think that this is a much better option to have available to you than the LBP level editor. I am nowhere near talented enough to make a game that anyone other than my girlfriend would sample, but I am waiting with bated breath what some of the most talented Xboxers can produce.

  • Gnort #3 3 years ago

    "Creators can also charge for their games"

    I read that creators must charge for their games. Does anyone know the answer for sure?

    The whole XNA thing could be great, if it actually gets adopted by the indie community, or it could be totally forgotten within a few months. Either way, there will have to be a decent way to separate the wheat from the chaff, as a lot of rubbish will make its way onto the service and may make finding any gems quite difficult.

  • woodnotes #4 3 years ago

    I reckon this will be absolutely huge. Of course there will be loads of crap to sift through, but there's a 5-star rating system which can help and of course there only needs to be a couple of awesome games to make it worth it.
    Edited by 1 at 20/10/08 @ 09:51

  • Dizzy #5 3 years ago

    "I hope that this is not taken as a pure fanboy comment, but I think that this is a much better option to have available to you than the LBP level editor"

    Yes and no. The technical skills to make an XNA game is about 1000 times higher than a LBP level. That being said, I am sure some XNA games will have level-editor features and there might be "construction" kits like LBP. Distributing those levels will not be seamless atm, since there is no SDK for that.
    Edited by 1 at 20/10/08 @ 09:53

  • redneon Verified Programmer, SUMO Digital #6 3 years ago

    I'll be interested to see if this is a realistic estimate. To be honest, I think 48 hours is a little ambitious.

    I've made a few games using the XNA tools but I'd only consider submitting a couple. Most were just tech demos, after all.

    I really wish they would allow C++ development, though. C# is nice and I understand why they don't allow unmanaged code but I'm tending to find that I'm much more likely to just code things up using the libraries I've been using for years :)

  • Vice.Destroyer #7 3 years ago

    Point taken, farticus.

  • DrDamn #8 3 years ago

    @Vice.Destroyer
    In some terms it's a much better option, but as pointed out not really a proper comparison. Completely different propositions.

    While XNA provides a much larger set of options to create you do need a lot of programming experience to get the most out of it - and a PC for that matter. The LBP create mode is far more limited in scope, but sets out to allow an artistic individual to create something special without extensive technical knowledge or understanding.

  • Jimpanse #9 3 years ago

    fine fine :)

  • Kryon #10 3 years ago

    The other difference between XNA and LBP is that XNA devs are disallowed from using racially insensitive material in their games. PS3LOL, AMIRITE?

  • Dan_LXIX #11 3 years ago

    Look at that - a perfectly sensible discussion until Kryon appeared :|

  • TuftyMcTavish #12 3 years ago

    So that's where Kathleen Sanders is working now. I never knew that.

  • Kryon #13 3 years ago

    @Dan_LXIX

    I really wouldn't call comparing an in-game level editor and building a game from scratch a sensible conversation, but there you go...

  • Jamiesan #14 3 years ago

    @Gnort - yep, MS have said that XNA devs must charge either 200, 400 or 800 MS points for their games, although every game will have a free demo. Demos will be timed by default and can't use online multiplayer, although devs can set their own restrictions on top of that if they want. Also, if the game is > 50mb, they have to set their price at 400 points or higher.

    As an indie dev, I'm looking forward to this, although MS were a bit late in telling the community about the demo's offline restriction. Kinda screwed with my online-only game's chances of having a good demo ;)