Xbox Live Arcade and XNA

In 2000, Microsoft announced it was going to release a new console gaming system to compete against Nintendo and Sony. At the time, I thought they were out of their minds. Microsoft was at the time, a company I had known only to produce an operating system that, while nearly ubiquitous, was merely okay from a quality standpoint, and an office suite which ran on said platform. I was also perhaps somewhat bitter at them for acquiring Access Software the year before; a move which ended the Tex Murphy series of games, much to my dismay. It was certainly not clear that Microsoft was the type of company who had their hand on the pulse of the game industry. Several years later, I think it’s safe to say that I can retract that position. Microsoft managed to leverage DirectX on their new system, thus making it much easier to develop for the XBox than any other of the systems available at the time. They also leveled the mighty cash war-chest at numerous other high-profile companies (Rare, Bungie), and managed to bring out on the Xbox some of the best received launch titles since Mario. Far from a lucky start, Halo 2 is, years later, still the best selling console game ever (although Gears of War, another Microsoft exclusive, is giving it a run for its money).

Xbox Live

Having earned my respect, after years of delivering a continuously high-quality gaming experience, It is interesting to see what they’re doing now with the 360 and Xbox Live. The Xbox live environment itself has several things that are worth the admission price right off the bat, but Acheivement Points are definitely the drug that sells itself. Microsoft has essentially issued an edict whereby all 360 games and all XLA games have set amounts of points which can be earned by doing things in the game, both on and offline. Some of these tasks are trivialities which are earned easily during normal game play, others are only granted to the most dedicated players. This system has in effect created a standardized system of gamer cred. There have always been those folks who have to get every last bloody note in Banjo-Kazooie, who have to beat every level without losing a life. This has always been relegated I think to the very hardcore, or very obsessed. Even so, there’s never been a facility to show off to your friends how bad ass you are, until this point. Given the popularity of the system, I’m very surprised that Nintendo and Sony have not decided to provide competing point systems, in effect handing Microsoft control of the de facto standard for gamer reputation. What this means is that when a gamer has a choice over which system to buy a game for, all other things being equal, the 360 is the system of choice, as no other system will earn you the publicly accessible respect for completing parts of the game.I think the real draw of Xbox live will not come to a head for another year or so though. There is a slowly growing network of collaborative technologies emerging. This network hasn’t quite coalesced yet, but will firm up by the end of 2007, and I predict by the end of 2008 that some exciting things will be come to fruition.

XNA’s Not an Acronym

The first part of that network is XNA. The Microsoft XNA Framework is a set of tools and runtime environment designed to aid in video game development and deployment. The framework allows independent developers to design both 2D and 3D games from the ground up, and deploy them in both Windows and on the Xbox 360 with minimal code changes. The framework simplifies many aspects of game design, and has a steadily growing community of users. Some issues exist (for example, in order to distribute games you develop for the 360, you presently are required to distribute the entire source code and the user must recompile it), and is seriously lacking documentation for the more advanced functions. Nevertheless, XNA provides a solid beginning to Indie and Homebrew console development on a scale never seen before. Better yet, XNA Game Studio Express and the XNA Framework are free to download, although deploying onto an Xbox 360 requires a Creator’s Club Membership, which has an annual fee of $99 (a modest fee).

Torque X

There are several extremely inexpensive tools which have emerged to integrate with XNA. The suite of choice at the moment is GarageGames‘ Torque X. Torque X is a fully functional Game Engine for both 2D and 3D games. The engine is designed to integrate seamlessly with XNA, as well as several other tools offered by GarageGames, such as the Torque Game Engine (the technology behind such big-name hits as Tribes) and the 2D Game Editor Tools included in the Torque Game Builder. The TGB is extremely inexpensive ($100 for Indies, $400 for Commerical), as is the TGE ($150/$750). GarageGames also offers inexpensive content packages to allow you to get your game up and running without waiting for costly art and sound assets to be created.With these tools in hand, the barriers to entry for game development on the 360 have dropped away substantially, making the 360 the platform of choice for independent games developers. The ultra-high end, cutting edge games still lay in the domain of large developers with massive budgets, but for the first time we have the ability to inject fresh independent creativity into the console environment. The only remaining problem is publishing.

XBox Live Arcade

Enter Xbox Live Arcade. XLA is a feature of the XBox Live system whereby gamers can pay to download titles from the system, in a manner similar to Valve’s Steam. The titles offered tend to be smaller, non-feature length games, or ports of older games. Overall, I’m not particularly impressed with the offerings so far (Although there are some tasty ports, such as Alien Hominid and Worms HD, as well as a couple of new gems such as Wik: Fable of Souls and Settlers of Catan). Microsoft is unwilling to allow just anybody to put their games up on XLA, and rightly so. After all, XLA is a platform for Microsoft to make money as well, and it’s a brand for them: They want that brand to be known for its quality. There are a rigorous set of standards a game needs to meet to be considered for introduction on XLA. But those standards don’t necessarily require you to be a big name studio. Microsoft’s DreamBuildPlay initiative is proof positive of this. They want to encourage people to use these tools, and are in a position to take risks with regard to publishing titles over XLA, because the overhead for them to do this is substantially less than traditional publishing channels. In the next two years, once developers have had a chance to play with the tools, and the XLA ecosystem really gets developed, I think you’ll start to see some really neat titles on XLA that are new, dynamic ideas, and aren’t published anywhere else.If Microsoft plays its cards right, it has the opportunity to turn Live Arcade into a fountainhead of high-quality, fresh, and creative gaming, and at little to no expense to itself. At the same time, they can endear themselves to the independent crowd, a group largely bulldozed over by the Juggernaut in the last two decades, and re-market themselves as a dynamic, edgy organization along the likes of Apple and Google (you know, the way they used to be known in the 90s).

Now if they would just open a Microsoft Games Studio in Toronto…