21 February 2008
Amateur game developers will be able to share their own titles over Microsoft's Xbox Live online service.
The company has launched a community driven service that will let amateur developers build and distribute games to Xbox customers. Microsoft's Chris Satchell, at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco commented:
Ten million people will be able to play your games,
Microsoft also announced a sequel to its four and a half million-selling game Gears of War.
I think of this as gaming created by the community and managed by the community but enjoyed by everyone,
said Mr Satchell of the new game distribution system.
Microsoft freely distributes tools, called XNA, which gives amateur developers the chance to build games for the Xbox 360 and for Windows.
But until now the games could not be shared. The tools have been downloaded 800,000 times and more than 400 universities worldwide are using the XNA package.
Mr Satchell went on to say it was the democratisation of development and distribution.
Microsoft also announced that it was planning a revenue sharing model for the community games distributed over Xbox Live.
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