First off, I love the XNA framework goal and implementation.  A lot of people do not understand how it really works.  I have heard people complaining that Microsoft will not pay it enough attention or will be slow to certify games.  What these people do not realize is that Microsoft is not supposed to be a part of the process.  It is a community-driven process, similar to the <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Community_Process”>JCP</a>.

The JCP has been in process for 10 years now, and has been arguably successful.  It allows the community to give feedback and shape the direction of the Java programming language.  In the JCP you generally have large companies such as Oracle, or Red Hat participating.  In the XNA process it will be regular people like me that our XNA enthusiasts.  I am not involved in this  process, nor am I an expert XNA programmer.  While I hope, in my infinite spare time, to be able to better my understanding of the XNA framework and game programming in general.  I expect I may never reach the level that is required to become a member of the XNA approval process.

What does all this XNA stuff mean to you the casual gamer?  Quite frankly, not much.  Except to know that Microsoft is handing over the reigns for the community to produce content for the XBox.  This is a welcome change and something that has never been seen in the console gaming world before.  Another important thing to note is the cost, XNA Game Studio Express is completely free.  However, to test and run on your XBox will cost you $99 / year (compare to ~$1700k for Nintendo’s SDK).

What is Microsoft trying to get out of this?  Quite simply, a devoted community will be creating content for which they will take 65% of the sales and never have to pay out a cent. There are overhead costs of developing and maintaining the service.  More importantly for Microsoft I think this is an attempt to combat piracy.

Recently I have been debating on buying the R4DS chip for my Nintendo DS.  I wanted to play a neat little homebrew game that I have seen called Pocket Physics for the Nintendo DS.  Normally I wouldn’t bother with pirating and modding my systems, but, if I had a legitimate reason to put a chip in my DS, the temptation to acquire every single game made for the DS for free would be too much to resist.  Do you see where I am going with this?  Microsoft has taken away our moral excuse to mod our XBox.

After using the new, utterly useless ‘quick mute’ feature in Call of Duty 4 I began to wonder, “Infinity Ward, why did you tease us so?”. After thinking through the issue, I decided that the reason is simple. The mute feature is not truly integrated with the dashboard. This doesn’t explain why the settings can not be carried over from match to match, but it got me thinking. Is Microsoft withholding API features from 3rd party developers?

I remember the first time that I played Halo 3; when I went to someone’s profile while playing, a few menu items appeared. I think they are Halo 3 Service Record, Halo 3 File Share, and perhaps another. I don’t know if anyone else notices details like this, but being a programmer I got excited. This feature is not as simple as it may seem. This had to be accomplished through a dashboard update. What I wonder is why aren’t other people using it. Currently, the only way I can see someone’s rank in Call of Duty 4 is to go to the leaderboard, and then they have to be my friend. Why didn’t Infinity Ward, put a little dashboard integrated stats feature in there? In other games it is worse. How about Rainbow Six: Vegas? The only way I can see someone’s rank is by being in the lobby with them.

I know that there could be other reasons NOONE has used this feature. It might be difficult to do, time consuming, or maybe developers have not found a good use for it. Admittedly, there would be some cross platform compatibility issues, but nothing more than the controllers, and XBL cause. I doubt these are the reasons that it has not been done by anyone else. I think MS has not given 3rd party developers access to these API components. Why would they do this? I don’t know, maybe to make Halo 3 stand out a little more? It could also be a security issue or something. It seems to me that someone else would use the features.

I am surprised I have not heard anyone say anything about this. I guess most people don’t really notice the added Halo menu. Maybe people don’t care. I, for one, would love to see more games making use of this feature.