One of the two big Microsoft news out of the Game Developers Conference today of course is the extension of XNA Game Studio to the Zune. It means now with one development framework and toolset, game developers can make the relatively simple transition between three platforms to publish their games on – the PC, XBOX 360 and the Zune.
You might have seen pictures on Engadget and Joystiq, but nothing beats full-motion video. Dan Fernandez has uploaded a short snippet of the Microsoft keynote with Chris Satchell showing off a game demo on the Zune. Debunking some of the fears it wouldn’t play well, the controls looks pretty intuitive and the graphic are smooth as well.
Aren’t they forgetting something again?
It has been here always, with the promise of gaming.
It has had the praised touchscreen and the 5-way pad.
It has friggin online cababilities.
Yet even the xbox 360 refuses to talk to it. Yeah, it’s the forgotten windows mobile. I do remember how they were bringing that mobile live service. I even recall Major nelson using it. It was also supposed to support that XNA-thingie.
Booyah! I just got my Zune 80.
Windows Mobile is mostly business users, so making it a gaming device makes less sense than putting it on the Zune.
Hopefully they will allow people to distribute games as they please, from their own websites. For free. Can’t wait. Got game ideas!
will it work on the 4 and 8gb zunes, too?
Very good!
@the dude
Yeah. Just not the Zune 30 (well, maybe they might. But you won’t get the awesome Zune Pad control).
Does not play, says “Sorry this video is unavailable”
@matt: That’s a bug with MSN Videos which happens quite often. Just refresh the page and try again till you get it.
The game creator has the option to use the Zune Pad specific controls (so that would obviously not work as well, if at all, on the Zune 30)
The other cool thing I’ve heard is up to 8-player(?) local mutliplayer with other Zunes. Apparently you cant join in Xbox sessions, but you can play against other Zunes
Does this mean that people will be able to create random applications for the zune, or does it have to be XNA?
awesome! next step: native hdd support!
the claps make me feel depressed. am i becoming a geek?
xna coul become one kick-ass cross platform game dev suite.
@Chustar
XNA. Of course you could make applications in XNA… you don’t have to make games, but I don’t know how limited it’d be.
That’s really cool
Looking forward to trying that out.
Cool. I can’t wait until the Zune officially comes to Canada. Zune 80 wows me the most. XNA is a also a pretty cool dev suite. Boy am I jealous of that offer for students that Long mentioned in a another post.