Games Everywhere: XBOX Live & at Zune

We all love games.. we all love XBOX.. we all love Zune... and now all of it is coming together... hey wait, I like to write games too.. so be it - one can now author games and run it on Zune and share it on XBOX Live!

I personally think that this is a gaint leap for the Microsoft platform from 2 perspectives:

  1. It is community focused. The games that are authored by community members can now be shared on XBOX Live and downloaded for FREE!
  2. Interoperability between MS products at a deep level. Zune and XBOX both have direct dependency on the hardware it runs on and by enabling games to be written on both, MS has unlocked huge synergistic benefits..

sometime ago, i was thinking about Zune and wondering why doesn't it take benefit of Silvelight capabilites. going by the direction things are moving it may soon be a reality!

One can develop these games using the XNA Game Studio 2.0 toolset for free from http://creators.xna.com .. there are already 7 games available on the XBOX Live from today!

but to build games for Zune you will have to wait for XNA 3.0 to be available later in the year (with a preview in April 2008)...

Some key features that will be available:

  • Ability to support local ad-hoc wireless play with up to 8 different Zunes.
  • Discoverability/access to user’s music – allowing the user to customize background soundtracks or create real-time visualizations

Now i think Zune is more social than iPod and is definitely a better player than iPod.. hope that the community takes to developing these games quickly! i for once would like an "Abhishek" authored game to debut on Zune devices!

for indian software industry, this opens up new opportunities of developing new age games.. for mobile game developers distribution of their games was a big issue.. with XBOX Live opening up, there is potential for them to reach out to a larger set of audiences..

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