XNA - Pay to play on your own XBox?

8/10/2007

I have posted recently about XNA, the .NET framework for developing games on Windows and the XBox. There is a dirty secret though when deploying to the XBox.

Windows

To deploy your games on Windows, all you need to do is ship the executable and any used assemblies. You can even develop commercial games for Windows and ship them using the XNA Framework.

XBox 360

To deploy your game on an XBox 360, even your own XBox 360 the story is not so simple. From a technical standpoint it is pretty easy, simply plug in a USB cable and deploy it using tools in the XNA Framework. However anyone, including yourself, who wants to run any game built in XNA Game Studio Express (The current version that is available, and is free) must be a member of the XNA content creators club. This is not a one off purchase, but a subscription. I could not find prices for Europe or other parts, but in the US this costs $99 per year.

What is bad about this is that even to deploy to your own XBox, you have to have a current subscription. And anyone who want to use your XNA game, must also have a subscription.

I have a few theories on why Microsoft has done this.

XBox Sells at a Loss

It is not news that most game consoles including the XBox 360 sells for less than it costs to manufacture. Add in distribution, marketing, and development costs and the loss is even greater.

So if the XBox is selling at a loss, how does Microsoft make money on it? The obvious answer would be on XBox games. But it is more complicated than that because not all Xbox games are produced by Microsoft. To develop games for the XBox developers must purchase a development kit which includes software and rights to develop for the XBox. These kits are generally quite expensive. In addition, it is possible that royalties for each game title sold are applied. Whatever the arrangement, the point is that Microsoft makes up for the loss and hopefully for some profit as well through the games.

When you add XNA Game Studio express it threatens to erode that channel. If everyone with XNA could make and deploy games for free, this would create a huge move to XNA bypassing the normal developer kit and retail channels. It would allow people to buy an XBox 360 and simply play games only made with XNA.

Rendering Machine

There is one more problem, and this is the biggest of all. The XBox has amazing video rendering capabilities. In fact, not even the most expensive (around $1200) top end graphics cards for the PC can match it. If XNA was freely deployable this could lead to people and even companies purchasing the XBox at a loss for rendering and general purpose computing.

Raise the Price

So why not just raise the price of the XBox 360? Because the other game consoles are sold at a loss too. Just like the mobile phone market in the US, once you have subsidization of hardware it is very hard to escape. One possibility is to sell an XNA license which costs $200 or so and simply includes the XNA Framework. That is allow distribution of XNA games, but instead of requiring a subscription require each user to buy the XNA Framework once for their XBox.

Conclusion

Microsoft is slated to release a professional version of XNA Game Studio in 2008. This will likely be in the similar price range as the current XBox professional developers kit, or may require a purchase of it as a prerequisite. I think that the current XNA deployment arrangement is not what is should be. I think that Microsoft realizes it too, but wants to see how XNA Game Studio Professional moves into the market. I predict that after XNA Game Studio Professional is released the deployment of XNA Game Studio Express applications will be improved. We just have to wait for all the variables to be in play first.

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