Microsoft’s game sharing service welcomes community game developers

During the Game Developers Conference, Microsoft announced a new video game sharing feature for Xbox Live that will allow gamers to play and rate community developed games. They can also share theses games with any of their Xbox Live friends.

Microsoft believes that the new “open distribution” service will be a boon for community game development, allowing any level developers to almost instantly reach 10 million Xbox Live users. With the announcement of this new service, seven games created using XNA Game Studio 2.0 have already been announced: JellyCar, Little Gamers, The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai, TriLinea, RocketBall, ProximityHD and Culture . These games are currently available for download on Xbox Live Marketplace.

Microsoft anticipates availability of more than 1000 community created games by the end of the year. Community game developers can develop games for the service using the XNA Game Studio 2.0 and XNA Creators Club membership. Once they finish with the games, they will have to submit the games for review. On successfully enduring the reviewing process, the game will become available to the Xbox Live community of gamers for downloading. Community game developers will be allowed to participate in the beta test of the service Spring 2008 and they can start distributing games by the end of 2008.

John Schappert, corporate VP of Live, during his GDC keynote, talked about Microsoft’s plans to engender a social and creative revolution like the one brought by digital music and video sharing. Microsoft has been one of the earliest adopters of digital distribution which might just usher in a new era for mid and small sized game developers (including indie and community game developers).

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