Tag: XNA

Last weekday before Gamefest!

As the title implies, Gamefest is rapidly approaching.  It’s the last weekday before the conference starts next week.  Oh man, I am excited!

I’m not excited because I’m going though.  Truth be told, I’m not, even though it’s just a short drive away.  While I’m sure I would love actually being there, I have so many things to get done, I just can’t seem to pull myself away from work.  It’s pretty great being excited about what you’re doing at work.

Could it be that I’m excited because of things that will be said?  Seems likely.  I’ve seen the presentations, I’ve seen the demo’s, I know the announcements that will be made.  Shhh.. I shouldn’t say too much.  I’ve probably said too much already.

I’ve seen the future, and I can’t wait to talk about it.

Why does everyone seem to think the XNA Framework is only XBox?

In the comments section of my last post (not including the april fools joke) many people are talking about how MDX2 is ‘dead’ and they can’t afford an XBox dev kit, etc..

I’m not entirely sure where the confusion of ideas has come from.  The XNA Framework is going to be cross platform.  This means that it will run on Windows.  XBox 360 (and thus development kits) is not a requirement for using the framework at all.  You will be able to use the framework and write games for Windows even if you’ve never seen an Xbox 360 before.

While MDX2 as a name may be “dead”, many of the API’s in the framework will look quite familiar to developers who have used MDX2.  I also enjoy reading everyone discussing how much things are going to cost ignoring the facts that:

  • We haven’t said anything about availability or pricing
  • The DirectX SDK is already free

Everyone seems to be getting all up in arms by jumping to conclusions, and making a lot of bold assumptions.  At least let us announce our plans,etc before you go off predicting such doomsday scenarios..

Before you ask, no, I’m not aware of when we’ll be announcing more of the plans.  So I guess everyone will continue to assume the worst until we either verify their fears or disprove them. :p

(Edit: I can’t spell obviously)

Post show ramblings after the Game Developers Conference…

All in all i think it was a really good show this year.  I met with lots of interesting people doing lots of interesting projects.  I also heard ramblings that the show next year might be in San Francisco rather than San Jose.  It was awfully crowded, so maybe a change of venue might be in order, but really i don’t know if it’s going to happen or not..

The expo itself was decently sized this year with lots of good booths.  Renderware had a large booth once again, but it seemed a little more enclosed this time, so i didn’t actually go in there.  Nokia’s N-Gage booth (which was huge and popular last year) was smaller and much less popular this year..  Part of that probably has to do with it’s sub-prime location this year compared to last year, part, but not all..  ATI and nVidia’s booths both had interesting presentations happening throughout the day, and the AMD64 booth was quite popular as well.  The Intel booth was huge as always, and they once again had the ‘contests’ where 6 people would play an online game for 5 minutes, and the winner would get the game (this year the game was ‘Call of Duty’)..  I played once and came in third place (i sucked), but did get a stuffed intel bunny-man doll.

My talk seemed to be received very well too.  I covered most of the basic areas for managed code in gaming, showed some demos, failed in showing other demos (doh!), and got some good questions..  One demo in particular really stood out for the crowd and i was asked many questions on that one after the talk and throughout the show.  It’ll be released in an upcoming DirectX SDK Update..

I loved the award shows Wednesday night, we announced XNA, and i think it was an all around great show.