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Microsoft Announces XNA Development Tools for Next Xbox

Microsoft announced XNA Studio at the opening of the 2005 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. XNA Studio, which will be based on the popular Visual Studio development tools, should take a lot of the work out of developing titles for the next generation Xbox. Microsoft execs claim that XNA Studio will help keep development costs on par with the current Xbox.

Love it or hate it, much of Windows' popularity with developers stems from the relative ease of development that Visual Studio brings to the platform. If XNA Studio has that same quality, then Xbox 2 could have a significant advantage with developers relative to Sony's Playstation 3 or Nintendo's Revolution consoles. Given that the underlying architecture of Xbox 2 is moving away from the PC-based architecture that made the first Xbox popular with PC game developers, easy to use, powerful development tools are a must to keep and attract 3rd party support.

Yahoo! Gets Into Cell Phone Games Biz

Yahoo Inc. has announced the launch of Yahoo Games Studio to develop games for the rapidly growing cell phone market. This development should especially raise Yahoo's profile in east asian countries such as China, Korea, and Japan where cell phone penetration is significantly greater than that of the United States. Cell phone penetration is about 66% in Japan compared with 54% in the U.S.. In the fiercely competitive Hong Kong market, cell phone penetration is a whopping 115% which means plenty of potential customers for Yahoo developed games.

Final Fantasy Creator Joins Microsoft Games

Microsoft has announced that Hironobu Sakaguchi, best known as the creator of the popular Final Fantasy RPG series, has joined Microsoft Game Studios. Sakaguchi-san's Mistwalker studios will be developing two RPG titles exclusively for the next Xbox games console. This deal would seem to indicate Microsoft's determination to make a stronger showing in the Japanese market with the next Xbox. The large physical size of the first console, coupled with a dearth of titles that appealed to Japanese tastes, most notably RPGs, is blamed for the poor showing of the Xbox in Japan.

Sources
Gamasutra
GamesIndustry.biz
GameSpy

Ubisoft Announces Ubisoft Campus

Ubisoft has announced the creation of the Ubisoft Campus in Montreal. This will consist of a variety of college and university level courses in game development related subjects, such as game design and 3D modelling. The campus will support Ubisoft's expansion of their Montreal studio announced two weeks ago. Ubisoft intends to add 1000 jobs in Montreal over the next five to ten years.

With strong support from the Quebecois government, the creation of the campus and development studio may ultimately strengthen Ubisoft's position with respect to industry leader Electronic Arts which recently took a 20 percent stake in Ubisoft and may be interested in acquiring a controlling interest. EA has also recently endowed a chair for interactive gaming studies at USC.

Sony Reveals Cell Chip Details

In the never ending war between PC gaming and Console gaming, Sony and company have upped the ante once more. Partners Sony, IBM, and Toshiba have released more details of the Cell chip that will power the next generation Playstation games console, and probably other yet to be announced devices.

The significance for gamers is that the new 4 GHz Cell sports features, such as a multicore architecture, that hitherto were only seen in super computers. This neatly leapfrogs the best available on the desktop of even the most hardcore PC gamer. And it firmly establishes games as perhaps the major driver of computing innovation and games consoles as the home of potentially the most innovative gaming experiences. Developers tend to gravitate towards the platforms that have the greatest potential audience and also the most computational horsepower. That horsepower allows the developer the most freedom to fully realize their game design and vision.

Gamecube Coding Competition Announced

Just when you may have thought there was no such thing as an indie or homebrew scene on the Nintendo Gamecube, Cubehacker has announced the first ever 60 Day Coding Competition for Gamecube.

The competition is open to games and applications that run on the Gamecube. Entries must be submitted by March 15, 2005. The top prize is a $500 gift certificate that may be used at console development tool supplier Divineo.com, cosponsor of the competition. Visit the Cubehacker site for complete information as well as links to useful Gamecube development tools.

Nintendo Locks In Top Ten Family Friendly Games

Despite recent attempts to attract a more mature audience to its game platforms, it looks like Nintendo still has a solid lock on family friendly gaming. Game Crazy recently announced its Top Ten Family Friendly Games of the 2004 Holiday Season and all ten entries are games currently exclusive to Nintendo games consoles. Most of the games are first party Nintendo franchises with Super Mario 64 for the new DS topping the list. The only exceptions being Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories and Final Fantasy I and II: Dawn of Souls, both Game Boy Advance RPGs from Square Enix.

Getting the Job Done: Finishing A Full Game

Many game developers embark upon making the next great game, and one way or another the job just doesn't get done. In Finishing A Full Game, Michael Labbe explores a number of pitfalls that stand between the developer and getting that great game done and out the door.

Windows Clone ReactOS Ported To Xbox

The ReactOS has been successfully ported to Microsoft's Xbox games console. ReactOS (currently at version 0.2.4) is an Open Source effort to build a Windows clone. At this point, the ReactOS comes up on the Xbox and just sits there since working USB drivers have not yet been completed so it is not possible to do anything with a mouse or keyboard. Commentary on Slashdot has been mixed with many being amused that a Windows clone has been ported to Microsoft hardware, and others dubious as to the usefulness of a clone that currently only implements Windows NT APIs.

Still, this may open some interesting possibilities for those seeking to develop homebrew games for the Xbox. Assuming that ReactOS matures enough to support some flavor of the DirectX graphics API or just a GDI implementation that is games friendly, ReactOS would then be another platform on which to develop Xbox games. And since the Windows platform is a very popular one with developers, the learning curve to developing games for ReactOS on Xbox may not be as steep as that of other homebrew avenues. Granted, if this happens at all, it will be long after the Xbox successor appears and the original begins to fade into memory. But the Dreamcast, a console that saw its last Sega game nearly 3 years ago, has a thriving homebrew community and it is likely that some future games console developers will come from the ranks of DC and Xbox hackers.

GarageGames Releases RTS Starter Kit

Gamasutra reports that GarageGames has just released its RTS Starter Kit. As the name implies, this is a development package intended to make it easier for independent game developers to create realtime strategy games. The RTS Starter Kit is an add-on that requires a licensed copy of the GarageGames Torque Engine to purchase and use.