Taking online multiplayer console gaming to the next level, Microsoft, architect of the Xbox Live gaming service, announced the formation of a "Creator's Club" that will allow hobbyists and amateur game developers to be able to play and share their games with the 10-million-member strong Xbox Live community. The company has said that all games created by a developer of any level will be up on the Live service to be played, but games will be reviewed for objectionable content and pulled down as and when necessary.
Talks about such community-driven gaming had been on since last year, and the issue came to the fore at the Game Developers Conference 2008 in San Francisco.
To develop games for the Xbox 360 as well as for Windows, Microsoft has been distributing XNA Game Studio 2.0, the successor to the year-old Game Studio Express -- a software that allows people to design computer games as well as develop them for the two platforms. However, until now, user-created games could not be shared among community members.
Seven games that have been created using XNA Game Studio 2.0 are currently available for download on the Xbox Live website; Microsoft is expecting the number of games thus created to exceed 1,000 by the end of the year. Also, it is anticipating that by the same time, the number of Xbox Live community users will double in less time than it took to reach its current member strength.
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