"Colosseum" coming to Xbox Live Arcade!

Shortfuse Games - a small game company out of Skövde, Sweden - have announced their first title - Colosseum - is coming to the Xbox Live Arcade.

Colosseum is a large scale arena fighting game being made with XNA. In the game, you play as a fighter in ancient times, where you can fight up to 15 other players online in a giant Colosseum!


The official website has some screen shots and artwork for the game. The game has a cool, cel-shaded look and looks like it might be some fun! Hopefully it won't go the way of Undertow, which also suggested large battles but not enough people bought it.

Their website also has a competition for you to create a new sword for the game - simple draw a single handed sword and send it in! Check their website out here!

Gamespot: Dishwasher Developer explains XNA

Gamespot has had a quick chat with Dishwasher: Dead Samurai developer James Silva as he discusses his game, and how Microsoft's XNA works:

GS: What were some of the challenges working on the game with XNA?

JS: One of the biggest challenges I had was optimizing performance--namely controlling Garbage Collection. XNA uses managed C#, which has some inherent pitfalls on the Xbox360. However, once you get the hang of how to avoid silly mistakes, it's all gravy.

GS: What were the benefits of using XNA?

JS: In a nutshell, XNA takes all of the ugly stuff out of game development. Things like device initialization, managing the render loop, gamepad management, and the audio engine are all set up for you, so you can get to the fun stuff pretty quickly.

Check out the whole article below.

Source: Gamespot: Q&A: Dishwasher dev comes clean on XBLA XNA

Rumor: Microsoft cutting royalty fees for XBLA games?

This week was all about the democratising of Indie game development through the PC, PSN and XBLA. But according to Brian Crecente over at Kotaku, Microsoft may be getting a little greedy on the current XBLA royalty fees - claiming they may have as much as halved the previous amount given to developers.

For the last few years Microsoft had given XBLA developers a very generous royalty share of 70% - now sources are saying that may have gone down to somewhere near 35%.

Microsoft has responded to the allegations, which you can view here on Kotaku, however they neither confirm or deny the rumor.

If the rumors are true - it seems like an almost hostile move by Microsoft which could possibly push waves through the Indie community back to the PC, PSN or Wii. One of the main reasons XBLA is so popular is that it's actually one of the few ways to make some decent cash out there in the Indie scene - a scene where most games are made out there for no profits whatsoever, and a scene where games are - in general - never actually made to completion.

If such a sudden change has occurred, it may begin to turn people off using the XNA library. A game like The Dishwasher is already fairly far along in development - but what can a developer like this do now that they're already deep into the XNA structure? You can't go back - you're committed to the platform. You're stuck.

If this is true it could also mean that some games could go UP in price - a game like Bionic Commando Rearmed was made with a fairly large budget for an XBLA game - under the assumption that they would get most of those costs back with the generous royalties - now it might be too much of an effort to do this kind of project again.

Of course, this is all speculative, it might just purely be rumors, or not as severe as suggested - but even still it could be a blow to the XBLA initiative. At the same time, we don't know what sort of royalties are being pushed by Sony or Nintendo on their respective consoles either.

Kotaku will hopefully be following up on this as more information comes up.

Source: Kotaku - "Rumor Microsoft Cuts Indie Royalties in Half", Kotaku - "gdc08 Microsoft Responds to Royalties Cut Rumor"

GDC '08 - A quick note about the current XNA game test...

The Gamerscore blog was able to get some context on how the XNA tester framework is going to work:

The ability to download and play these preview games is for a limited time. You can only download the game launcher until February 24th, and all the games will stop working on March 9th. After that, you will have to wait until the holiday release of Xbox LIVE Community Games before you can play again.

So the games will only work for a couple of weeks - looks like we'll have to wait until the final release comes out during the Summer in the US. Hopefully they'll officially release the damn thing in Australia too, so I won't have to work around getting a US account and everything!

Go play them - Dishwasher is looking pretty damn exceptional.

Source: Gamerscore Blog

GDC '08 - Giant GDC Day 1 video wrapup!

The XBLA is on the tip of everyones tongues after the first true day of GDC - and all the video sites are on top of it - XNA and XBLA alike.

Montage Footage

Gametrailers: Montage Footage
Gametrailers: How To Get your XNA downloader
Gametrailers: XNA Overview

Bionic Commando Rearmed

Gametrailers: Area 1 Boss Fight Gameplay HD
Gametrailers: Explosive Weapons Gameplay HD
Gametrailers: Base Infiltration Gameplay HD
Gametrailers: Side Mission Challenge Gameplay HD
Gametrailers: Lucky Catch Gameplay HD
Gametrailers: Area 4 Gameplay HD
Gametrailers: Area 4 Gameplay HD Part 2
Gamevideos: 'Boss Battle'
Gamevideos: 'Area 5'
Gamespot: Gameplay Movie 1
Gamespot: Gameplay Movie 2
Gamespot: Gameplay Movie 3
Gamespot: Gameplay Movie 4
Gamespot: Gameplay Movie 5
IGN: 6 Brand new videos (mentioned below)

JellyCar

Gamersyde: Gameplay Video 1
Gamersyde: Gameplay Video 2
Gamersyde: Gameplay Video 3
Gamespot: Gameplay Movie 1
Gamespot: Gameplay Movie 2
Gamevideos: 'Target' gameplay
IGN: 2 Gameplay videos

Proximity HD

Gametrailers: Gameplay HD
IGN: Gameplay Video

Dishwasher: Dead Samurai

Gamersyde: Gameplay Video 1
Gamersyde: Gameplay Video 2
Gamersyde: Gameplay Video 3
Gametrailers: Gameplay HD
Gamespot: Gameplay Movie 1
Gamespot: Gameplay Movie 2
IGN: 2 Gameplay videos

Culture

Gamersyde: Gameplay Video 1
Gamersyde: Gameplay Video 2
Gamersyde: Gameplay Video 3
Gametrailers: Gameplay HD
IGN: 2 Gameplay videos

Little Gamers

Gamersyde: Gameplay Video 1
Gamersyde: Gameplay Video 2
Gamersyde: Gameplay Video 3
Gametrailers: Gameplay HD

Rocketball

Gamersyde: Gameplay Video 1
Gamersyde: Gameplay Video 2
Gamersyde: Gameplay Video 3
Gametrailers: Gameplay HD

Whew!

Source: IGN, Gamespot, Gametrailers, Gamersyde, Gamevideos

GDC '08 - Surprise! XNA realised! Go download demos now!

Microsoft's big reveal for those at home? Finally realizing the potential of the XNA games interface! You can now go and download demos of upcoming games that use XNA through your Xbox 360!

To do so you have to download the Community Game Blade, to do so you must go here:

Marketplace blade > New Arrivals > Game Content > XNA Creators Club > XNA Creators Club Game Launcher (7mb)

Download it and a new Blade will appear, allowing you to download demos of these games:


• “JellyCar.” Created by Walaber from the United States, this game is about driving a squishy car through squishy worlds, trying to reach the exit.

Click here for more images of Jelly / Jello Car!


• “Little Gamers.” This is a 2-D high definition action side-scroller based on the famous Web comic “Little Gamers” created by Loïc Dansart, a 24-year-old software developer from Belgium.

Click here for more images of Little Gamers!


• “The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai.” An intense 2-D action platform game created by James Silva from the United States, “The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai” has a unique, highly stylized look and fast and fluid action.

Click here for more images of The Dishwasher!


• “TriLinea.” This puzzle game created by Edison S. Prata Jr., Renato Pelizzari da Silva and Davi da Silva Prata from Brazil mixes fast-paced action with strategy.

Click here for more images of TriLinea!


• “RocketBall.” Created by Tyler Wanlass, Patrick Murty and Todd Barrons of the United States, this neighborhood game of dodgeball explodes onto the street with fast-paced multiplayer action.
Click here for more images of RocketBall!


• “ProximityHD.” This game, created by Brian Cable from the United States, takes the essence of strategy games — battles for control of territory and armies — and distills it down to a simple, easy-to-understand set of rules for casual players.
Click here for more images of Proximity HD!


• “Culture.” Created by independent game development company Hidden Path Entertainment from the United States, “Culture” contains challenging games and puzzles based on beautiful flowers.

Click here for more images of Culture!