ResearchMicrosoft's XNA Game Studio Express
Are you sitting down? OK, think of the Open Source software movement. Linux, BSD, Open Solaris, GNU, etc. Now think of which company has shown the most opposition to Open Source. Halloween documents, astroturfing, "Get the Facts", etc. Now hear this: Microsoft has offered, free for download from the Xbox Live site to anyone with Windows XP running on their PC, the XNA Game Studio Express. This software allows users to develop their own games for the Xbox 360 and PC simultaneously - and even share their games freely with each other! No, change that to: !!!
Why, Microsoft! How Open Source of you!
Well, OK, they're still going to make a buck. For an annual fee of $99, you can join the "creator's club" which lets you be a part of the community trading the homebrew software. So you won't be able to get far posting the projects on Sourceforge. Still, that's only the price of two big game titles, which you would be spending anyway, and there's plenty of other sites out there that charge for membership.
The news report has already become legend, but for those of you who missed it: "Somebody modded an Xbox, installed Avalaunch, and put all sorts of Xbox mod-scene apps on the box, then brought this box along to a meeting with Bill Gates. Bill saw a demo of this, was blown away, and asked 'How can we engage this community?' - instead of saying something like 'What sort of jihad must we wage against these free-programming infidels?'" Steve Ballmer didn't even throw a chair at anybody. I hope they realize that modded Xboxen can even run really dangerous software like - *gasp!* - Linux! But anyway, come what may, Microsoft is going to be the first to actually embrace an open-development subculture on company hardware instead of constantly trying to snuff it out.
It makes fantastic sense: always, people have obviously wanted to have complete development freedom on hardware platforms. Through the years, virtually every major hardware platform has spawned a subculture of hobbyist geeks figuring out how to bypass the hardware's built-in taboos to make it do stuff it was never intended to do. Finally, some big wigs are starting to realize that letting people do what they want to with your hardware is a good thing: it sells more hardware, makes more fans, gets you better press, and trains a next generation of developers for your platform. Besides, if you resist it, some sharp cracker sniffs out a way around your locked platform in about 12 hours and posts it online, anyway. Gee, let's make money off of him instead.
From the press release: "[it] will democratize game development by delivering the necessary tools to hobbyists, students, indie developers and studios alike to help them bring their creative game ideas to life while nurturing game development talent, collaboration and sharing that will benefit the entire industry. Eventually, you'll be able to distribute that code to other Xbox 360s opening up a unique publishing avenue which will democratize game development on consoles."