Microsoft has been kicking the phrase “democratizing game distribution” around for quite some time, but at this week’s game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco, they shed some more light on the saying. Soon Xbox Live users would be able to share, play and rate user-created XNA Studio games.
“The time has come for the games industry to open its doors to all game creators, enabling anyone to share their creations with the world,” said John Schappert, corporate vice president of Live, Software and Services for the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft. “Our goal is to drive a creative and social revolution in games with the same transformative power that we’ve seen in digital music and video sharing.”
Microsoft plans to put the entire project in the hands of the Xbox Live community. A peer-review system will be put in place to filter out inappropriate content and copyright infringement. This same peer-review system will be used to determine which games will be available to users, as each submitted title will be judged by a select group of users for “accuracy in representation and appropriateness.” This process will be open for beta usage this Spring.
At the announcement, Chris Satchell, general manager and chief XNA architect at Microsoft announced that seven games would be available immediately via the Xbox Live Marketplace including “Little Gamers,” a high definition, 2D side-scroller based on a web comic of the same name and “Rocketball,” a high velocity take on dodgeball.
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