Microsoft has released the first public version of its XNA game development platform today at the Game Developers Conference 2006 in San Jose, California. The company has also made this "Microsoft XNA Build March Community Technology Preview" available for download from their web site.XNA (which stands for Xbox/DirectX New Generation Architecture) is a development framework and set of tools to help game companies to save money and speed up their development times. It extends existing DirectX tools with a set of new libraries and a custom implementation of the .NET development framework. Game developers can write code in the C# language and create games that will run on both Windows PCs and the Xbox 360 console.
C# and the .NET framework offer the ability to write in what is known as "managed code," where the framework itself handles low-level issues such as memory management, instead of the programmer having to manually allocate memory for each object and free it up when it is no longer needed. The idea of using managed code for game development is not a new one at Microsoft, as the company released a book and CD-ROM called Managed DirectX 9 Graphics and Game Programming in 2004. The book showed how easy it was to get simple 3D game engines up and running (I even managed to get as far as programming a spinning, colored, triangle) but admitted that performance concerns were a big problem: 3D games written in managed code would typically run anywhere from 50 to 80 percent of the speed of their non-managed counterparts.
With the XNA release, Microsoft claims to have solved most of the speed issues, stating that "game developers will benefit from the ability to re-use code and game assets in developing multiplatform titles, without sacrificing performance or flexibility." It may not be the appropriate solution for the most cutting-edge games that rely on tight, hand-tuned code to get maximum performance, but smaller developers may find the tools irresistible:
"We were proud to be a launch partner with Microsoft for Xbox 360 Live Arcade, and we've been pleased with its success so far, said James Gwertzman, director of Business Development at PopCap Games Inc. "Anything that simplifies the process of creating great casual games and lowers the development complexity for Windows and Xbox 360 is something we're happy to support."
In addition to the release of the XNA tools, Microsoft announced today that they are enhancing their Xbox Live service with the release of the Xbox Live Server Platform. This set of server tools will help developers add more features to their games, such as the "Live Revenge" mode that lets players track their relationships with their rivals, and the "Save and Share" feature, which allows gamers to post video clips of their best and worst gaming moments and share them with friends. The Server Platform also allows developers to use XML feeds to add changing information (such as weather conditions) into games.
But the most significant news about the release of the Server Platform is the fact that Microsoft is allowing other developers to share the server technology itself, which potentially means that third parties can open up their own servers if they want, yet still have them integrate with Xbox Live. The press release gives few details about licensing and restrictions for third-party Live servers, but the big giveaway is this line: "The Xbox Live Server Platform can also be used to support the creation of massively multiplayer online game worlds." Since MMO games require developers to be able to customize, modify, and maintain their own servers, this means that the licensing for the Server Platform will have to allow this.
