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XNA Studio to Integrate Teams and Speed Game Production

SAN FRANCISCO March 7, 2005 Today at the Game Developers Conference, Microsoft Corp. announced new XNATM software that will enable enhanced collaboration between content creators, programmers, management and quality-assurance staff members to speed the game production process. Based on the Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005 Team System, the latest innovation of the company's flagship development platform, XNA Studio is an integrated, team-based development environment tailored for game production.

Demand for high-definition content and richer, more involved game worlds will bring increased complexity to the process of creating next-generation games. Game teams are already wrestling with the challenges of growing content requirements, larger and more specialized teams, and globally distributed resources. XNA Studio will address these workflow challenges by delivering an advanced build framework driven by a unified file format. The build framework is partnered with an integrated tool suite to optimize the game production process for all team members.

"The productivity gain from Microsoft's collaboration and build tools has already been proved for programmers, so the opportunity to bring the same process and technology to content creation is huge," said Marc Petit, vice president of product development for Discreet, a division of Autodesk Inc. "XNA Studio can have a clear impact on the business of making games and will likely emerge as a differentiating force in game development."

Integration of Content and Code

Today the content build and integration process is largely ad hoc, fragile and inefficient. The result is that teams spend a considerable amount of time fighting with their build processes, rather than adding new content to their games. XNA Studio puts content at the core of the game development process by delivering reliable, controllable and reusable methods for managing and building content in synchronization with the game code.

"Skyrocketing consumer expectations are putting tremendous pressure on game development teams," said Chris Satchell, general manager of XNA at Microsoft. "New hardware will be required to deliver the experiences consumers crave, but the real challenge is integrating the whole development process to allow fast iteration of game content and code with minimal rework. This allows developers to realize their visions and deliver higher-quality games more quickly."

Collaboration Drives Creativity

The next generation of game development will require collaboration across diverse and distributed teams with an environment that is tightly integrated, highly scalable and optimized for content production.

XNA Studio will provide robust versions of key production tools such as asset management, defect tracking, project automation and work lists. These tools will work together seamlessly to automate common development tasks and present interfaces tailored to the different functions within the team. XNA Studio will allow team members to collaborate quickly and effectively using familiar techniques and tools, even when elements of the team are distributed geographically. This all adds up to more developer time generating unique content and less time running the content process.

Industry Support

Key gaming middleware partners continue to support the XNA software development platform and have joined Microsoft in recognizing the need to bring stability and consistency to the game development process. Companies such as AGEIA Technologies Inc; Alias Systems Corp.; Discreet; Havok; and Softimage Co., a subsidiary of Avid Technology Inc., see the value in the XNA Studio development environment.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Interesting stuff in there, as expected from Micro"developers ! developers ! developers !"soft

 

[ferricide]

how much chance does all of this XNA crap stand of being adopted when everyone is going to have to ship the games on PS3 as well?

 

[JackFrost2012]

how much chance does all of this XNA crap stand of being adopted when everyone is going to have to ship the games on PS3 as well?

Well, I think "make XNA so sexy and desireable that you don't ship a PS3 version" might be part of the plan.

 

[Nightbringer]

I ever believed that XNA is created for do the PC to Xbox systems and the Xbox systems to PC conversions easily.

 

[Ryudo]

how much chance does all of this XNA crap stand of being adopted when everyone is going to have to ship the games on PS3 as well?

Not the shitty ones !

 

[Shard]

Has XNA done anything of note yet? I am not talking about the future mind you, but this development platform has been around for the better part of a year now and I have heard jack squat about people using it for games and stuff so far.

 

[Folder]

This is Micrsoodt saying, "Work with us and we'll do half the job for you!"
It's a brillant move at this stage I say, whatever your feelings about the company/it's consoles. A lot of developers are still licking wounds from early PS2 dev nighmares.

 

[cybamerc]

how much chance does all of this XNA crap stand of being adopted when everyone is going to have to ship the games on PS3 as well?

XNA is just an umbrella term that covers everything from visual studio to DirectX. So it'll definitely be adopted. But make no mistake. The revolution of XNA is purely marketing related.

 

[gofreak]

Has XNA done anything of note yet? I am not talking about the future mind you, but this development platform has been around for the better part of a year now and I have heard jack squat about people using it for games and stuff so far.

The only comment I've heard from a developer on it was in that Condemned preview in Game Informer a month or so ago. They seemed pretty pleased with it.

As I understand it, it's really just a very very modular/flexibile games engine/framework where you can pick and choose what components to use and they'll work together without any extra effort? You still have to code for them, but you don't have to code to integrate them. I.e. throw in, say, the Unreal 3 Engine's renderer for graphics and Havok Physics 3 for the physics? That's just an example, I don't actually know if UE3 is in there or not yet (Havok apparently is). It'll allow you to use MS tools/components or participating third party tools/components very easily together. Or such is the aim..

It's not as big a deal as being made out, I don't think. It was a mistake for MS to push it so hard outside of developer circles - fans are latching on to it without knowing exactly what it is.

 

[Spider_Jerusalem]

how much chance does all of this XNA crap stand of being adopted when everyone is going to have to ship the games on PS3 as well?

It's simply a development environment made for developing PC and Xbox games (and for easily porting games between the two platforms), so it'll be definitely be adopted. It doesn't exclude developing on other platforms environments, obviously.

 

[footlose]

how much chance does all of this XNA crap stand of being adopted when everyone is going to have to ship the games on PS3 as well?

Apparently a great chance considering Xenon will be out long before the POS3. It's going to suck however when developers downgrade the games made on Xenon for the POS3. Sucks to be Sony fans.

 

[Doom_Bringer]

Apparently a great chance considering Xenon will be out long before the POS3. It's going to suck however when developers downgrade the games made on Xenon for the POS3. Sucks to be Sony fans.

:lol :lol

 

[Culex]

Apparently a great chance considering Xenon will be out long before the POS3. It's going to suck however when developers downgrade the games made on Xenon for the POS3. Sucks to be Sony fans.

Wow he got banned FAST for that one!

 

[Azih]

He got banned? For what?

Edit: Er, aside from consistently trolling Sony I guess

 

[xsarien]

The revolution of XNA is purely marketing related.

This needs to be in giant, red letters at the top of the forum or something. XNA is a cool name for otherwise standard development tools.

He got banned? For what?

You're joking, right?

 

[Vashu]

Wow he got banned FAST for that one!

It's not only that one.. He was flaming and bashing in other (PS2 centric) topics... Good for him though, we don't need retards like that...

 

[Azih]

You're joking, right?

Hey I don't pay much attention to Sony topics, I did a search for all of his previous posts and saw the problem.

 

[KeithFranklin]

We love what Visual Studio 2005 Team System (VSTS) brings to managing the development process. Bringing this to XNA is a fabulous time saver for developers and project managers. VSTS brings task management (Sam is assigned to this, Susie is assigned to that, etc.) right into the tool the developers spend 90% of thier day in. VSTS integrates project management right into the development tool. For instance when you check in code it supports mandatory units tests, code coverage tests, status updates, etc. This helps eliminate the drudgery of project status meetings and team members soley dedicated to making sure standards are followed. As items are implemented and checked in background code compilers compile the code, run unit tests, code coverage tests, standards compliance tests and build reports that managements, stakeholders, etc. can look to see the health of a project. Used to all be a manual process where status was given in mind numbing meetings, then project managers had to manually update spreadsheets and charts to give an idea where things stand. Now a developer has a task list of the stuff he needs to accomplish and every time he checks in something he must take a moment to update status and the project plan documents are tied into the system and are automatically updated. When a project manager assigns something new to a team member they get a new item in thier task list. Very cool stuff.

Visual Studio Team System Overview

 

[DonasaurusRex]

It's simply a development environment made for developing PC and Xbox games (and for easily porting games between the two platforms), so it'll be definitely be adopted. It doesn't exclude developing on other platforms environments, obviously.

You sure about that? Xenon isnt on X86 ISA its on the PPC ISA ...those ports are never easy, I think XNA is for making whatever platform that is being developed for an easier job not making it the port o matic.

 

[Community Forum]

"Hey there, hot stuff! Why don't you step into my studio, and I'll show you how easy I really am!"

 

[h0l211]

Gamasutra has an in-depth interview with XNA's Chris Satchell with more info:

http://www.gamasutra.com/gdc2005/features/20050307/xna_01.shtml

 

[Spider_Jerusalem]

You sure about that? Xenon isnt on X86 ISA its on the PPC ISA ...those ports are never easy, I think XNA is for making whatever platform that is being developed for an easier job not making it the port o matic.

This is what they said when they unveiled XNA. It will make much easier, obviously not totally automatic, the process of developing on multiple platforms and porting code from one to the other. They want to use it exactly to achieve the same result thay had with Xbox: attract PC developers with ease of porting, even if the architectures are quite different this time.

If it'll deliver those promises, time will tell ;-)

 

[gofreak]

Gamasutra has an in-depth interview with XNA's Chris Satchell with more info:

http://www.gamasutra.com/gdc2005/features/20050307/xna_01.shtml

Some interesting stuff there.

In answering this question, Satchell makes it clear that, while XNA Studio runs on Windows for development purposes, there's no reason why any exported data shouldn't be used anywhere, much as Visual Studio data can be compiled for many purposes. However, Microsoft has built or is building more tools closer to the run-time end of the business to give XNA Studio users significant ease in building content for Microsoft platforms, because exported XNA Studio data can be specifically designed to work with these tools.

I've been wondering about this for some time. Obviously aspects of "XNA" won't be much use outside of windows (e.g. DirectX, any software frameworks etc.), but other parts could be leveraged generally for development on different platforms, it seems (asset creation/management etc.).

 

[CaptainABAB]

Something else to keep in mind:

Based on what is said in the GamaSutra article,

"Based on the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team System, XNA Studio is an integrated, team-based development environment tailored specifically for video game development, and will likely launch as a retail product early in 2006."

It won't help with this years launch of xenon unless you risk using the beta.

I'm also wondering if XNA Studio will be part of the MSDN subscription or not. MS still hasn't decided on pricing for Team System yet and it could be REALLY expensive or not depending on how much they expect support to cost, etc. Some features (like defect tracking, build framework, workflow) I thought were in Team System anyway. So I'm not clear what XNA Studio adds to Team System specifically besides some directx SDK integration maybe. I hope it isn't anything that is limited to only third party Game publishers...sounds like some of the features would be great for other types of developers.

 

[element]

I'm interested in how much it will be and the licesne structure for Product Studio, greatest issue tracking software ever dreamed of.