A more accurate explanation of XNA

Mitch Walker, the Program Manager for XNA, has a good explanation of what XNA actually is: Managed DirectX plus a games-oriented framework plus games-oriented content pipeline tools. Not the YouTube of Video Games… but that’s a good thing!

This entry was posted on Monday, August 28th, 2006 at 101pm and is filed under XNA. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

  • Patrick

    I rescind some of my earlier ‘tude. It sounds like they’ve made a really A class prototyping utility. It occured to me this might even be superior to Flash in that regard. The problem is, my options for releasing what I produce with this are limited. Sure I can put it up as a download link with a Zip file that contains and installation package, but compared to a browser embedded demo that is cross platform… its like comparing a newspaper classified to a billboard. While I admire the technical package, the buisiness constraints are just too suffocating for me to consider this as a realistic production tool. If they supported web (I’m not expecting OS X support) this would be HEAVEN. Unfortunately, no matter how nice the pond is, its just a closed pond, there are no streams to the ocean except through the corporate sewers.

    Now thats a stretchy metaphore.

  • http://troygilbert.com/ Troy

    I’m sorry if I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but…

    While I admire the technical package, the buisiness constraints are just too suffocating for me to consider this as a realistic production tool.

    Please stop with the disappointment over not getting what was never promised (nor expected)! XNA is not an avenue for indie retail, it is a hobbyist development platform. Hobbyist, not indie, not for-profit, not commercial, not retail. Money exchanged for goods and/or services is not an aspect of any part of what currently exists!

  • http://blog.3deurope.com Julien Ellie

    I am a dev on the XNA team and I think Troy has a really good point here. Express is targeted at students and hobbyist. The XNA team has said there is a Pro version coming next year. Indies are “pro” :) What will be started then could/should be more targeted at their needs. One step at a time!

  • http://www.kingludic.blogspot.com Patrick

    Julien, I think you’ve helped accomplish a wonderful feat of engineering and interface design, but even if the pro version is a cost-effective approach to prototyping and production, its still going to exclude Mac and Wii and PS3 platforms by default, right? Of those three, only the Wii is really competition for indie targeting, but I think its an important point, one that echoes back to the fundamental interface differences between the two platforms. If MS release a suite and engine with an indie liscence fee of 500-1000 dollars, I’d jump on it immediately and use that as my platform. But instead of producing a quality tool product and releasing it broadly, you all are producing a quality tool and releasing it as a tool to rally 360 software support.

    Now I realize there are huge buisiness reasons behind this exclusivity, namely that the company is taking a loss on every unit sold in exchange for potential software royalties. I respect this reality, but I disagree with that approach to doing buisiness.

    Still, you should be proud for having worked on a well done piece of software. They should transfer you guys to the Vista team ;)

  • http://troygilbert.com/ Troy

    …its still going to exclude Mac and Wii and PS3 platforms by default, right?

    Of course. No one claimed to be breaking that mold. And I hate to break this to you, but that mold isn’t going to be broken. Sony, Nintendo and Apple are all hardware companies at heart, and they, even more so than Microsoft, have a desire to keep people locked into their hardware. At least Microsoft is providing a toolset across the 360 and XP, which accounts for 99% of next-gen game hardware on the market currently.

    If MS release a suite and engine with an indie liscence fee of 500-1000 dollars, I’d jump on it immediately and use that as my platform.

    What!? Did I just read that correctly? That makes me think you don’t understand anything about XNA at all… Microsoft has released a suite of tools and a runtime engine with a license fee of $0 that works on WindowsXP and Xbox360. You can grab it tomorrow for WindowsXP (the beta) and start making games that’ll run on basically any computer that’s used for 3D gaming. And for Christmas, you can run it on your Xbox360 as well.

  • Patrick

    After reading Jeff’s response (heh, yeah, a bit late) I concede a lot of your points. This would have been awesome for me two or three years ago. I would use it know for prototyping if I wasn’t aiming on a web demo platform to be embedded in MySpace.

    This is very good for people younger than me, I concede that. :)

  • Patrick

    Actually, I just hooked up with a Junior CS major and I might try prototyping a design using the Torque X/XNA model.

    Mmmmm, thats tasty crow.

  • Bobbo

    The torque X /XNA route is the route I am headed down because it will also compile to Linux for fun.

    smiles . . .