Gamefest saw some unexpectedly good news for hobbyist gamers.
Microsoft just announced XNA Game Studio Express, a new XNA offering "targeted at students and hobbyists for game development".
The studio offering will allow developers to "develop games for Windows for no cost", and if you want to develop for the Xbox 360, you'll need to join the XNA Creator’s Club -- for only $99 a year or $49 for 4 months -- to get the "additional pieces needed to develop non-commercial XNA Framework-based games on an Xbox 360 retail kit". This will be a new Xbox Live subscription offering. And the express version will still include Autodesk’s FBX file exchange format.
A beta will be available August 30th, and the full version will be available "Holiday 2006". XNA Game Studio is based on Visual C# express 2005. A beta of XNA Game Studio Professional "is currently targeted for early 2007".
At the same time, GarageGames announced the Torque Game Engine for XNA, which itself only has an indie license of $100.
Time for me to finish my video game design docs ...
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