Several readers have emailed us to let us know that two games have appeared on Xbox Live under the XNA Creator's Club banner. A space shooter called Net Rumble and a letters game called Netters are both available for download as we speak, as I just verified, in both free demo and full versions priced at 100 Microsoft Points a pop. Unfortunately we've also verified that the two titles seem unplayable to the average users, with XNA Creator's Club launcher errors popping up even if you have the program installed. I suppose I'll just let them sit there on my hard disk until I figure out what to do with them. Lovely.

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London-based indie studio Beatnik Games have released a trailer for their debut title - Plain Sight.

Plain Sight is a multiplayer action title for PC and Xbox 360. Players control cute little robot skeletons that fly around a stylized environment and hit each other with swords to amass points. To 'bank' your points, you must blow yourself up - taking out as many of your rivals as possible.

Yes, it is essentially a game about suicide bombing robots. But it's ok - they are cute! And the background looks a bit like Tron, which can't be bad.

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This is Owlboy. It's a game from D-pad Studio. This is their description of the game:

Owl Boy is a 2D platforming adventure for the Xbox 360 and Windows PCs. Go with Otus on a free flying quest into the clouds and discover the secrets of the floating islands while preserving the Owls' integrity...

Pretty much sums it up. Good news is it looks pretty great! Better news is it's being entered into the IGF, so hopefully it can pick up a little more exposure while it's there.

Microsoft's recent announcement that it would let community developers earn money for games they make with the company's XNA toolset came as good news to some, but former XNA community manager David Weller is concerned about the lack of quality standards. On his blog, Weller wrote:

Being an ex-XNA member, I can still say, without a shadow of doubt, that Microsoft is offering a groundbreaking game channel, and that some people stand a chance to make great money from the system. It's an exciting opportunity, but the danger for consumers lies in Microsoft's deliberate steps to avoid discussions regarding game quality, even during peer review.

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Yeah! Homebrew Xbox 360 games made by XNA Creators Club members on Xbox Live! Sounds radical. Neat even. Shame Australia won't be getting it at launch. From the XNA website:

In which regions will Xbox LIVE Community Games be available when it launches this holiday?
Consumers in the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Spain will be able to download Xbox LIVE Community Games at launch. We'll be adding support for other regions later in 2009 and beyond.

[Thanks Dominic]

Now, just about anyone can be a game developer — and get paid for it, too. At its Gamefest 2008 event today, Microsoft announced that community games made using its XNA tools will be downloadable via either PC or Xbox 360, and that the creators will get 70 percent of the revenues, as we reported earlier today.

We spoke to game developers' group general manager Chris Satchell about the new community initiative. "We realised there was so much creativity out there in the community", he said. "So many people had great ideas, so we needed to give them a toolset to express themselves... and then we had to give them that worldwide stage where they could show it. And then the final step is, why not let them benefit from it?"

Microsoft saw, Satchell said, that incredible innovation came from viral communities of indie game designers across the web, and hoped to capture some of that community for its users. Satchell hopes that community games will become viral in the same way:

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Back in February Xbox 360 gamers got a chance to try out some of the exciting homebrew games coming out of the XNA Code Creators Club, and this holiday season they'll be able to buy them. Microsoft has dropped details about how pricing and payments will work for folks who have their games published via the new program, now called Xbox LIVE Community Games. Paying members of the Creators Club will be able to submit their games to the community for peer review, and if they deem it worthy they'll be able to set a price and put it up for sale.

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Brazil's Mother Gaia Studios is the winner of Microsoft's Imagine Cup, a competition that challenged students from around the world to use XNA community tools to build games around the theme of environmental sustainability.

Microsoft recently showcased the finalists at the 2008 Games For Change event in New York, and Mother Gaia took home the Game Development prize with City Rain, the company announced today. Australia's Team SOAK won the Worldwide Software Design invitational, and Singapore's Team Trail Blazers won the Embedded Development invitational.

Said Microsoft:

A total of 370 students from 124 teams representing 61 countries and regions competed in the worldwide Imagine Cup finals in nine categories: Software Design, Embedded Development, Game Development, "Project Hoshimi" (Programming Battle), IT Challenge, Algorithm, Photography, Short Film and Interface Design. The student teams were asked to undertake a series of challenges relating to digital media or technology depending on the invitational.

Full announcement and details on the winners after the jump!

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And now, the last of the leaked MS/Acti news items for the day. Included in Intellisponse's marketing/survey data was some information on Microsoft's User Generated Games program, which is what they were calling the service we know better as "Community Games On LIVE". The material says that it's a "new destination" for Xbox Live customers, offering "hundreds" of inexpensive games. Buying one "looks and feels just like buying anything else from Xbox Live", but most importantly, will be "most likely less expensive" than the "typical Xbox Live game". Hrm. If Microsoft wrote/approved that, it's a peculiar choice of words. For user-generated content on shoestring budgets (if a budget at all), shouldn't they be "definitely less expensive"?

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"Imagine a world where we have no ability to influence the people that are going to lead and shape thought for tomorrow," said Microsoft's Chris Satchell, general manager of XNA.

"We have social causes we care about, but we don't have the means to connect with people who can do something about them. We're not there, but its a world that's possible to see unless actvitiesi like we're doing here today really gain some momentum."

Satchell was at the 2008 annual Games For Change festival, discussing the ways Microsoft hopes its XNA development platform will help provide creative activists and educators the tools and opportunities to connect with the young, energetic audience passionate about new media and world issues.

"People will base their lives around gaming experiences; gaming experiences will permeate their lives," he said, stressing just how important it was for the culture to recognise games as agents of genuine social impact.

So what is Microsoft doing?

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