As you have probably heard by now, Microsoft announced yesterday that they would offer a consumer-grade version of their XNA Game Studio product, allowing ordinary people to make games that run on the Xbox 360. XNA Game Studio Express will cost $99 (some say it's a required flat fee, some say it's an optional annual fee, not sure which is right) and contain a simpler, yet unnamed, set of tools compared to the professional-grade Xbox 360 dev kits. Apparently Microsoft also plans to offer another version of XNA Express for "professional game developers" early next year.

Microsoft VP Peter Moore used exactly the right metaphors in a quote printed by the Associated Press:

A YouTube for games, sounds terrific right? Sure, but it's also a false analogy, at least for now.

As Raph points out, Gamasutra reports that the platform seems to be based largely on GarageGames Torque Shader Engine and Torque Game Builder 2D. Correction: the whole thing is still unclear to me, but apparently Torque has been ported to XNA, but is not coextensive with it. Read more at this Microsoft FAQ. I've used both these platforms for research and at Persuasive Games, and while they are powerful they're not exactly easy to use. This isn't Flash or Photoshop or iMovie folks. Newgrounds is a much more credible example of a "YouTube for video games" for the foreseeable future.

In fact, as excited as we are tempted to get about this new development toolkit, it's still unclear whether games created with XNA Express will ever enjoy general play on the console. All the news stories report that Microsoft will also retain some control over what content is allowed to be distributed. That may not be a bad thing, as even YouTube (sort of) protects against copyright violations. It's unclear if this means the end of the walled garden, or just the construction of a new one. As Brian Crecente notes over at Kotaku, the big question this announcement shrouds is what XNA Express really means for game distribution. Members who pay the $99 will be able to share their games with one another, but that's hardly distribution. As Brian says, "I'm curious if they're going to just create another area within Arcade Live and allow anyone to dump their games in there, or if it will be something more peer-to-peer." Gamasutra offers a little more clarity:

Update: Via the FAQ referenced above, XNA Game Studio Express Professional will require an Xbox 360 dev kit, and Express (non-pro) titles will not be able to be submitted for certification as commercial titles. In fact, as the FAQ explains, XNA Express games are "limited to non-commercial scenarios," although they can target Windows for commercial products.

I find it hard to believe that Microsoft would ever support something as anarchistic as YouTube, but in the long run, something quite interesting could very well come of this. It's too early to tell. Update: here's the current process as described in the Microsoft FAQ:

You'll need a 360 with a hard drive and you can't share the games via memory cards.

There is one thing we know for sure: Microsoft is making significant inroads into schools with this program. Ten schools, including USC, SMU, and Georgia Tech (where I work, and yes I am using Torque both in research) have already announced plans to adopt XNA Express. And that means that more new graduates will be versed in the basics of Xbox 360 development than in other consoles. And that might tip the scales toward Microsoft on both the commercial and independent fronts.