XNA 3.0 tech preview is out, and with it, you can dev or install some homebrew games on your Zune right now like Alien Aggressor and Galactic Wars 3. The directions are at [Zuneboards, thanks IPXX]
Our wait for games on the Zune is slowly coming to an end, as Microsoft has announced that XNA (an Xbox 360-light game platform) will come to the Zune this month. Not every title will be supported—Microsoft only has four XNA titles running on the Zune at this very moment—but those that arrive will support up to 8-player ad-hoc wireless gaming (as we mentioned before). Also of note, developers can use the Xbox 360 controller with the XNA software development kit and to map Zune actions to the controller.
newVideoPlayer("zune_games_potato.flv", 494, 350,""); There’s a Zune event going on up at the Microsoft event today and the Zune team showed off a few demos of games. Two cool aspects are that Zune XNA games supports 8-player ad-hoc wireless game play, and while there is no 3D hardware acceleration, it can use software rendering for 3D. The demo for the first-person shooter, Potato Chase, put these features on display.
newVideoPlayer("zune_games.flv", 475, 286,"");I got a chance to see first hand what the newly announced Zune gaming platform could look like. It’s important to keep in mind that this announcement is still in the early stages of development, and we won’t see any finished products, on the business or creative side, anytime soon. But this quick video walkthrough gives us an idea of what to expect in terms of development, API integration and wireless gaming.
Microsoft just announced that the XNA Game Studio, the user-created games program for the Xbox 360 is coming for the Zune. The demo shown at Game Developer’s Conference shows a person controlling the game with the Zune pad, pausing the game, going out and switching music on the Zune, then going back into the game. Very neat.
Microsoft XNA Game Studio, the user-creation tool that allows you to make Xbox Live Arcade-quality games for the Xbox 360, has just been upgraded to 2.0. The most interesting improvements in the new version are the multiplayer networking APIs, which means you can actually create games like Jason Chen’s Big Boob Robots that take advantage of Xbox Live’s network support. Other than this, it’s mostly improvements for developers that aren’t that exciting for people who just want to play homebrew games. [MSDN] More »
