Joseph Molnar, who recently informed us of magical Video Marketplace downloads that don't expire, is back again with an interesting article on the current state of Xbox 360 homebrew. Posted on his blog, the Pensive Gamer, the article is the third in a series dedicated to the homebrew scene on each new gen console (guess which systems the first two articles were about). The piece, naturally, centers on XNA. Molnar notes that there are many things that make the Xbox 360 attractive to homebrewers, most notably that Microsoft itself is aiding the homebrew scene with tools like XNA Game Studio Express. As it stands though, the homebrew aspect of the Xbox 360 certainly isn't without its faults. There are a few quibbles about feature support, but the most obvious barrier to homebrewers is the price. In order to run code on a 360, you must have a subscription to the Creators Club, which runs at $49 for three months or $99 a year. Before 360 homebrew can reach a mass market and attain wide acceptance, Microsoft will have to address this and other issues, especially if they plan to deliver the oft promised "YouTube for games."Remember folks, YouTube is huge for two reasons: it's user friendly and it's free. What would you like to see added to the Xbox homebrew scene? What could Microsoft do to improve it?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
2-15-2007 @ 2:23PM
Jared Brown said...
FREE
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2-15-2007 @ 3:53PM
MC Hampster said...
XNA on the 360 will suck until they add networking support. As it stands, you have ZERO access to the networking hardware which means no multiplayer over LAN or Internet and no access to resources over a network (for say a Media application).
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2-15-2007 @ 4:28PM
Arcaynn said...
It needs to be Free, or much lower in cost, say... $50 per year, about the cost of a first party game. It also needs to be free to just *play* the games. I want to send any game I make to my friend on a CD, and have him play it.
It needs to have full access to the 360's hardware. All cores, all networking, the whole deal.
It needs to NOT have achievements. Anyone with some coding experience would be able to get their scores up by 10000 without a problem. I doubt this would be an issue because I don't think Microsoft is that stupid.
And it already has the last two things: C#, the most awesomest language ev4r and Visual Studio. W00t
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2-15-2007 @ 4:55PM
Brian said...
Homebrew is for the PSP.
Honestly, there are so many wonderful games for the 360, I haven't even thought about homebrew.
Homebrew is necessary for my PSP, because the games aren't nearly as plentiful / playable / enjoyable.
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2-15-2007 @ 5:06PM
Jake Good said...
Network support in XNA. Access to the Dashboard? Maybe even UI widgets?
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2-15-2007 @ 5:38PM
rcholbert said...
@ #5
When people say PSP "homebrew", they really mean PSP "piracy".
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2-16-2007 @ 12:09PM
nealbailey said...
"When people say PSP "homebrew", they really mean PSP "piracy"."
No actually they mean homebrew, such as the PSP's killer app, the pop emulator. Being able to play PSX games on the PSP has finally made my PSP relevent again
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3-17-2007 @ 5:57PM
Darrien Woomer said...
From what I saw from XNA it seem good but not a YouTube of homebrews. I know that if I would get it I would use it only for downloading games so could I get a discount or even free. I also would not mind if I would have to pay around $80 for 13 months of Live if I got a year of XNA with it.
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