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[Xbox-Scene]

XNA: What's Free and What Isn't? Posted by XanTium | August 20 00:04 EST

From David Weller's Blog (Community Manager at Microsoft's Game Technology Group): There seems to be a lot of confusion about what is coming with XNA and what the $99 "fee" is, so I wanted to (attempt to) clarify the confusion. XNA, as a term, refers to a family of products and services.  We announced two major pieces of the family at this week's Gamefest: The XNA Framework and XNA Game Studio Express (GSE for short). Let's start with XNA GSE.  It's the tool that helps you build and test games, and runs on Windows.  This is what will be available as a beta release on August 30th. Then we have the XNA Framework. Technically, there's two pieces to the XNA Framework: 1. the libraries (or assemblies in our case), and 2. the runtime.   The XNA Framework libraries for both platforms are the same, which is how we enable you to write games that work on both platforms. Those libraries (for Windows) will be delivered along with XNA Game Studio Express on August 30th. Now, about the runtimes.  In the case of Windows, we just use the standard .NET 2.0 runtime. Easy as that. For the Xbox 360, we created a custom runtime, based on the .NET Compact Framework. This runtime must be downloaded/installed on your Xbox 360 before you can run an XNA-based game on it. Getting the Xbox 360 runtime requires a subscription to the XNA Creators Club, and it won't be available until XNA Game Studio Express hits initial (1.0) release during this holiday season. Right now, the $99 annual subscription cost (or $49 for 4 months) of the XNA Creators Club covers the cost of downloading and providing security servicing/updates to the runtime.  We are investigating ways to make the subscription more valuable, and will have more details as we get closer to initial launch date for the subscription service. So, repeat after me: * Building games using XNA Game Studio Express costs nothing on Windows.  Building games using XNA Game Studio Express costs nothing on Windows. * Deploying games on the Xbox 360 requires a membership in the Xbox Creators Club.  Deploying games on the Xbox 360 requires a membership in the Xbox Creators Club. Read More: David Weller's Blog

[SharkUW]

QUOTE

Right now, the $99 annual subscription cost (or $49 for 4 months) of the XNA Creators Club covers the cost of downloading and providing security servicing/updates to the runtime. We are investigating ways to make the subscription more valuable, and will have more details as we get closer to initial launch date for the subscription service.

Translation: We know it's horribly over priced, but we're not going to lower the cost because we don't want most people to use it. We'll figure out how to pad the offer with crap that benefits nobody but allows us to claim it's a fair price.

Thanks M$. Hundred bucks per year to update the runtime? Really, a hundred. How many people do you need working on this? I'd love to see where the money is flowing. I'm sure M$ is barely making a profit on this.

[DaddyO21]

if those runtimes come in a disc i can see a lot of people getting them for free.

[Software2]

So... $500 or so for the life of the console generation for what will certainly be a restrictive framework... Or $50 for a modchip that'll allow free range homebrew.  (IMG:style_emoticons/default/blink.gif)



Though, I suppose if it's a similar enough framework to what the big boys use I could see it as a great way to get your foot in the door for live arcade games or something.

This post has been edited by Software2: Aug 20 2006, 05:33 AM

[AkaBigWurm]

Its not on  Ozymandias' Blog its on Lets Kill Dave (Dave Weller) I been watching all the XNA team blogs for my Learn-XNA site

[shotgunsteve]

hmmm i wonder if an exploit could come out of these homebrew arcade games...

[xboxexpret]

[santium]

I can already see a way to get this free. (Well, partially)
Since XBL caches it's downloads, all someone would have to do it download it and grab it off the harddrive and distribute it. Of course, this won't work if they sign it like thier content, but then again, it's m$ so they might mess up.

[The Zep Man]

QUOTE

Right now, the $99 annual subscription cost (or $49 for 4 months) of the XNA Creators Club covers the cost of downloading and providing security servicing/updates to the runtime. We are investigating ways to make the subscription more valuable, and will have more details as we get closer to initial launch date for the subscription service.

Note that this is for the security of Мicrosoft, not yourself. Why the hell would anybody pay for this?

[Itcouldbeyou]

Who didn't get all that with the first announcement? Was this "news" really needed?...

I'm pretty sure the 99 bucks are that you don't start buying 360 to use as a generic computer as it happened with the original Xbox. I bought mine just as a media center (thanks XBM(P/C) guys!)
I think the 99$ are quite Ok.
What I'm a bit concerned about is that you have to share the source of everything to get it running on other boxes. While I support Open Source, I guess not every dev is willing to share their code - while professional XBLA coding is not possible with the free XNA.

[twistedsymphony]

QUOTE(Itcouldbeyou @ Aug 20 2006, 02:50 AM)

Who didn't get all that with the first announcement? Was this "news" really needed?...

I'm pretty sure the 99 bucks are that you don't start buying 360 to use as a generic computer as it happened with the original Xbox. I bought mine just as a media center (thanks XBM(P/C) guys!)
I think the 99$ are quite Ok.
...

My thoughts EXACTLY I'm glad someone else beat me to the poist...  The whole distinction between the runtime and the coding environment wasn't really needed... if you didn't gather that from the original announcment, you probably don't have any business using this thing yet anyway.  

I think the $99 a year is quite fair... I think a one time payment of $400 would be better, I'd rather pay once then semi-annually but to be honest I think it's a fair price for what is essentially a developers kit that lets you test your code on the actual console.

[MaTiAz]

QUOTE(Software2 @ Aug 20 2006, 05:01 AM)

So... $500 or so for the life of the console generation for what will certainly be a restrictive framework... Or $50 for a modchip that'll allow free range homebrew.  

You should say that when you actually have a modchip that DOES something else than patching the DVD drive FW letting you play some warezz.

[Fyb3roptik]

$99 is not alot of money at all, if you are serious about making a game for the 360. I think this is a great idea and I personally cannot wait to try out some things on the 360. $99 is a small price compared to $20000 that it normally costs. Hell my game engine cost more than $99. And hell its better than m$ not letting you do this at all!!! I dont see sony or nintendo doing this!!!!

[X-Clusion]

Isn't this like creating a giant hole???

If you'ld pay 99 bucks, you'll have to download "the custum runtime" which converts your 360 in a dev kit able to run unsigned code...

Big hole to start with, if everybody pays the 99 bucks for the year (+ the runtime) (or the 49 bucks 4 monthly incl runtime) and then unhooks to any update, and some people who have homebrew that works, distribute on the net and voila, homebrew on every 360 which owner payed 49 bucks for the XNA instead of the 50 bucks for a modchip??

My 360 cents

This post has been edited by X-Clusion: Aug 20 2006, 02:49 PM

[sicknasty413]

hmm...i still think having a modchip would be funner (yes, funner)... mainly because im a cheap bastard. But, good things can come out of this.. all the crazy programmers/coders/writers/modchip/exploit people will get this... learn crazy amounts from it.. and be able to do something for the rest of us... woooooooooot