Download preview versions of Xbox LIVE community games created with XNA Game Studio
Xbox LIVE Community Games (with XNA Game Studio) were announced this morning in a Game Developers Conference (GDC) keynote presentation. As a part of that announcement, 7 games created with XNA Game Studio have been made available as free downloads via the Xbox LIVE Marketplace for a limited time.
The XNA Creators Club Game Launcher and Xbox LIVE Community Games will be available as free downloads from now until midnight Pacific Standard Time on Sunday, February 24, 2008, so download them now if you want to be able to try them out. The games will be playable until midnight PST on Sunday, March 9, 2008.
My colleague Michael Klucher recorded a brief video with Major Nelson (which can be found here) where he walks through how to download the XNA Creators Club Game Launcher and XNA Community Arcade games (it is currently not an entirely intuitive process). To summarize that video and the FAQ items on Xbox.com and the XNA Creators Club, here are the steps you'll need to follow in order to try out the Xbox LIVE Community Games.
To download the XNA Creators Club Game Launcher:
- Go to the Xbox 360 dashboard
- Navigate to the Marketplace blade
- Go to the Game Store, then select All Games
- Scroll down in the list of games and click the one named XNA Creators Club. This list is alphabetical, so XNA Creators Club will appear towards the bottom of the list.
- Within the XNA Creators Club list, select the title named XNA Creators Club Game Launcher and choose to download it. Note that there are several items in this list, including one with a similar name. Make sure to select the one named XNA Creators Club Game Launcher
After following the above steps to download the XNA Creators Club Game Launcher, you can use the following steps to download Xbox LIVE Community Games:
- Go to the Xbox 360 dashboard
- Navigate to the Games blade
- Select Games Library, then My Games
- Select the XNA Creators Club category (also referred to as a "twist") from the menu along the top. No games will be listed initially
- Press the Y button on the controller to view the list of available games and download them
The following Xbox LIVE Community Games are available to download:
- Culture - https://www.xbox.com/en-US/community/events/gdc2008/xna/culture.htm
- The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai - https://www.xbox.com/en-US/community/events/gdc2008/xna/dishwasher.htm
- JellyCar - https://www.xbox.com/en-US/community/events/gdc2008/xna/jellycar.htm
- Little Gamers - https://www.xbox.com/en-US/community/events/gdc2008/xna/littleGamers.htm
- ProximityHD - https://www.xbox.com/en-US/community/events/gdc2008/xna/proximityhd.htm
- Rocketball - https://www.xbox.com/en-US/community/events/gdc2008/xna/rocketball.htm
- TriLinea - https://www.xbox.com/en-US/community/events/gdc2008/xna/trilinea.htm
There are already reviews that have been posted for a couple of the community games: