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Microsoft to allow homebrew development on Xbox 360

Xbox 360

In interesting developments, Microsoft has announced at a recent Gamefest Event in Seattle that they are releasing XNA Game Studio Express, a free tool which will allow simultaneous development on PC and Xbox 360 for any users.

The totally free tool will allow indepedent developers, students, or anybody else interested a powerful Microsoft development environment to create games for the Xbox 360 on any PC. Games will also be able to be released and tested on Windows XP machines as well.

Budding developers will be able to join a new 'Xbox 360 creators club' for $99USD a year - which will allow them to share their games, and also bounce them off other developers. Non-profit games built using the system will apparently be able to be distributed via Xbox Live to other Xbox 360 Creators Club members. They will be able to download and compile the game on their own copy of XNA Game Studio Express, and release this to their Xbox 360 for playing and testing.

If you want to find out further information, you can access the official XNA Framework FAQ on the Microsoft website. The beta will be available on August 30th for download.

Sliced Comments: A big announcement, which will surely make the 360 a very popular choice for home-brew apps, and the legitimatecy will help push it along. As Microsoft wants to encourage development on the Xbox 360 over other systems such as the Playstation 3 (which is meant to be very hard and costly to develop for) - it's a smart strategy, now and into the future.

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