XNA – What’s free? What Isn’t?

XNA seems to be a thing of beauty when it was first announced. But recently, there has been some confusion on when to pay and when it’s free. In case you are somewhat lost, XNA is also known as XNA Game Studio Express targets at students and hobbyists for game development. It is based on Visual C# Express 2005 and lets developers target both Windows and Xbox 360. XNA Game Studio Express contains the following: The XNA Framework, which contains the libraries and the runtime, and XNA Game Studio Express (XNA GSE).

XNA GSE is a tool that helps you build and test games, and runs on Windows. This is what will be available as a beta release on August 30th, along with the XNA Framework libraries. For the Xbox 360, a custom runtime, based on the .NET Compact Framework was created. This runtime must be downloaded/installed on your Xbox 360 before you can run an XNA-based game on it.

Getting the Xbox 360 runtime requires a subscription to the XNA Creators Club, and it won’t be available until XNA Game Studio Express hits initial (1.0) release during this holiday season. This is where the $99 annual subscription kicks in. The $99 annual subscription cost (or $49 for 4 months) of the XNA Creators Club covers the cost of downloading and providing security servicing/updates to the runtime.

So basically, building games using XNA Game Studio costs nada on Windows, but deploying games on the Xbox 360 is gonna cost you, since you need a membership in the Xbox Creators Club.

Comprende?

Via Let’s Kill Dave

XNA seems to be a thing of beauty when it was first announced. But recently, there has been some confusion on when to pay and when it’s free. In case you are somewhat lost, XNA is also known as XNA Game Studio Express targets at students and hobbyists for game development. It is based on Visual C# Express 2005 and lets developers target both Windows and Xbox 360. XNA Game Studio Express contains the following: The XNA Framework, which contains the libraries and the runtime, and XNA Game Studio Express (XNA GSE).

XNA GSE is a tool that helps you build and test games, and runs on Windows. This is what will be available as a beta release on August 30th, along with the XNA Framework libraries. For the Xbox 360, a custom runtime, based on the .NET Compact Framework was created. This runtime must be downloaded/installed on your Xbox 360 before you can run an XNA-based game on it.

Getting the Xbox 360 runtime requires a subscription to the XNA Creators Club, and it won’t be available until XNA Game Studio Express hits initial (1.0) release during this holiday season. This is where the $99 annual subscription kicks in. The $99 annual subscription cost (or $49 for 4 months) of the XNA Creators Club covers the cost of downloading and providing security servicing/updates to the runtime.

So basically, building games using XNA Game Studio costs nada on Windows, but deploying games on the Xbox 360 is gonna cost you, since you need a membership in the Xbox Creators Club.

Comprende?

Via Let’s Kill Dave