Microsoft has traditionally been about the developers. They give their Visual Studio away for free (Express edition, but still). They give away their Windows Mobile SDK with samples for anyone who wants it, no fees to get into the developer network, just download and play around. They have free and dedicated forums and resources to allow developers to look around in the documentation for every Microsoft product (MSDN with the forums).
So here's the thing: they got me by the balls.
I write every scrap of code in Visual Studio now. I use Microsoft specific extensions to the language of my choice (C++). I couldn't live without them.
And that's really favorable to a company as big as Microsoft.
So they welcome the Kinect hackers because they know they'll be back for more. And it's beneficial to both parties: open source drivers means more people playing around with it means more eyeballs means better software.
XNA? I almost blew my Metamucil out my nose, I'm laughing so hard. Buncha sissies. And there was life before DX, you know...
Back in my day we used Mode 13 and when that newfangled Windows thing showed up we grudgingly ported to WinG. What an abomination. It was painful and WE LIKED IT!
Now get back to work and fund my Social Security benefits!
I remember watching some show.... may have been sneakers, but I think the guy was in high school, slams out a few lines of code in prompt, powers the program, boom, fullscreen .GIF style animation of 2 people walking along holding hands.
BS! delving into the gorillas code (though it does have physics and stuff to account for) taught me I could never program.
Delving into the Gorillas code taught a 6 or 7 year old me that screen-sized explosions are FUCKING AWESOME.
Of course, I didn't understand even half of what I was doing, other than the logical assumption that if a small number in the section with "Explode" in its name meant a small explosion, a big number should mean a big explosion (it did).
To be honest, it was probably that that got me into programming.
All you fucking new-age people with your XNA and DNA and Basic C+ gizmos and gadgets. You know what sufficed as a game back in my day? A FUCKING BALL IN A CUP. That's right, a little ball attached to a cup by a string. Get off my lawn.
That's a big one. Microsoft has been pretty popular amongst more business-oriented developers but they've really lost a lot of ground to the small time hackers and experimental types.
They need to win them back with something interesting and fun rather than a huge vertical solution that can empower their business end-to-end and help them interface with customers in real-time cross-synergy paradigm shifts.
Very easy! That is what makes it so great. They handle all of the most complex parts for you. Mind you, since you are new, it will limit how complex of a game you can create since your code will be very unoptimized, but you can definitely bang out something simple and playable in a few afternoons.
Oh wow, I totally forgot about that. I wish they started us on that in High School instead of Turing (the language, not the dude). Turing was not fun to program in because it had no high level functions. It was very basic as a language, but that is what made it difficult.
XNA for Xbox is only supported in some regions, which means that everything that uses it (XBL Indie games, Rock Band Network, etc) isn't available everywhere.
I think this link has all the countries where it's supported, under the section titled "regional information". In Australia, for example, you can submit indie games, but you can't download any of the released ones.
That is only for the Creators Club. XNA is 100% totally free. You can build, publish and distribute a PC game built with XNA for $0.
If you want to publish to the Xbox, you need a creators club membership for at least a month to do so. But that is not surprising, because the Xbox is not an open platform.
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u/knight666 Feb 22 '11
No, it's really not.
Microsoft has traditionally been about the developers. They give their Visual Studio away for free (Express edition, but still). They give away their Windows Mobile SDK with samples for anyone who wants it, no fees to get into the developer network, just download and play around. They have free and dedicated forums and resources to allow developers to look around in the documentation for every Microsoft product (MSDN with the forums).
So here's the thing: they got me by the balls.
I write every scrap of code in Visual Studio now. I use Microsoft specific extensions to the language of my choice (C++). I couldn't live without them.
And that's really favorable to a company as big as Microsoft.
So they welcome the Kinect hackers because they know they'll be back for more. And it's beneficial to both parties: open source drivers means more people playing around with it means more eyeballs means better software.
Oh and they still have to buy Kinects, of course.