Month: March 2017

You all heard the news last week, right? That EVERYONE can now write “real” games for the XBox One? It’s as easy as 1,2,3,4…

Xbox Live Creators Program

“Now any developer can integrate Xbox Live into their game and publish to Xbox One and Windows 10.

Xbox Live Creators Program is currently in Preview. Download the SDK and start configuring, coding, and testing today, towards a future submission date.

Xbox Live will soon be open to all developers via the Xbox Live Creators Program – no concept approval required! You will be able to rapidly publish your game to Xbox One or Windows 10 through a short and simplified certification process.

Integrate Xbox Live social experiences such as sign-in, presence, leaderboards, and more into your title, with minimal development time. Xbox Live social features are designed to organically grow your audience, spreading awareness to over 55 million active gamers. The full set of Xbox Live capabilities is available via the ID@Xbox program and a table comparing the features is below.

Using tools you already use, and your existing Xbox One retail console, you can easily create or leverage existing code to develop your title. Supported game engines include Construct 2, MonoGame, Unity, and Xenko. We anticipate more game engines and tools to support Xbox Live Creators Program over time. Please check with your preferred game engine for their support of the Creators Program.

On Xbox One, which offers gamers a curated store experience, games published through the Xbox Live Creators Program will be available in the new, “Creator games section” within the store. On Windows 10 PC, games in Xbox Live Creators Program will be visible with the other games in the Windows Store.

There are four steps necessary to get started with developing with the Xbox Live Creators Program Preview.

The Xbox Live Creators Program is a great for quickly publishing your game to Xbox One and Windows 10, with a simplified certification process and no concept approval required.

If you want access to even more Xbox Live capabilities, be featured in the main Xbox One store, or receive dedicated marketing and development support, you can apply to the ID@Xbox program.

…” [Click through for the links and more details]

You caught the MonoGame (aka one of our favorite game dev tools) reference?

MonoGame and the Xbox Live Creators Program

“… Microsoft announced the Xbox Live Creators Program, which allows anyone with a Windows 10 PC and a retail Xbox One to develop games for their console and publish them to the Xbox One Store.  This is a welcome return and improvement of what made game development using C# and XNA so fun and career launching for many indies.

MonoGame, being the open source spiritual successor to XNA, now supports over 10 platforms including UWP.  By using MonoGame and targeting the UWP platform you’ll be able to create 2d and 3d games for hundreds of millions of Windows 10 PCs and the whole Xbox One family, including the upcoming Project Scorpio.

…

Our new MonoGame 3.6 release has a year of improvements to our UWP support as well as our other platforms and works great on Xbox One.  To get started today get the Xbox Live Creators SDK and then download the MonoGame SDK.  There is a great little article by Xamarin on getting started with UWP and MonoGame which can help you if you’re new to MonoGame.

…” [Click through for more]

So go, now and get your game on!

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Continue reading Xbox Creators Create!→

Join the Visual Studio 2017 launch event keynote with Julia Liuson, Brian Harry, Miguel de Icaza, Keith Ballinger and Scott Hanselman as they share the newest innovations in Visual Studio, .NET, Xamarin, Azure, and more. Continue reading Keynote | Visual Studio 2017 Launch→

Team Xbox was proud to sponsor the 17th Annual Women in Gaming luncheon, held last week during the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco. Over 400 women attended to connect with friends, meet new people and celebrate their accomplishments. The theme “Be You” was a call to empower attendees to celebrate their authentic selves and skills they bring to the game industry every day. The event was moderated by the vibrant Erin Wayne from Twitch, with five incredible speakers from across the games industry offered their inspiring stories of how “being themselves” led to success.  Read on to learn… Continue reading 17th Annual Women in Gaming Luncheon Encourages Women to “Be You”→

In this special episode commemorating the 20th anniversary of Visual Studio, Steve Carroll sits down with a number of people who have played a big role in the long history of Visual C++. They share their stories using or developing with Visual C++…and carrying huge product boxes and MSDN documentation books around. The following people talked about their history with C++ and Microsoft: 

• Steve Carroll, Principal Group Software Engineer Manager (and host of GoingNative!)
• Mark Levine, Principal Software Engineer Manager
• Mark Hall, Principal Software Engineer
• Marian Luparu, Principal PM Manager
• Eric Mittelette, Senior Program Manager

And last but not least, Visual Studio 2017 RTW is live! Download it and check out all the major improvements the team brought to C++ developers.

Continue reading GoingNative 57: VS 20th Anniversary Special | C9::GoingNative→

Featuring the largest open world ever created by the developers at Ubisoft, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands is now available for Xbox One and Windows PC. In Wildlands, players will enter a fictional Bolivia in the not-so-distant future. As part of an elite fighting force, they must take down the Santa Blanca drug cartel by any means necessary. Behind enemy lines, they will hunt down targets and discover intel while commandeering any of the more than 60 available vehicles including cars, motorcycles and even helicopters. To topple the cartel, players will have to fight their way to El Sueño, Santa… Continue reading Take Down the Cartel Today in Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands for Xbox One and Windows PC→

An original Xbox exclusive, Voodoo Vince debuted in September 2003 and never left our hearts. Developed by Beep Industries, this quirky puzzle-platformer set in the magical underbelly of New Orleans has only ever been playable on the original Xbox. Unfortunately, that means that fans have lost access to an old favorite over the years, and many people have never had a chance to try it at all. This will all change on April 18, when the wisecracking voodoo doll fondly remembered by a generation of gamers comes back to life, courtesy of a sprinkle of Zombie Dust. Voodoo Vince: Remastered,… Continue reading Voodoo Vince: Remastered Available April 18 for Xbox Play Anywhere→

Learn how to get started with Microsoft Azure using Visual Studio 2017 Continue reading Getting started with Azure in Visual Studio 2017 | Visual Studio 2017 Launch→

Microsoft Corporate Vice President Kirk Koenigsbauer and a special guest will share perspectives on teamwork, what’s new in Microsoft Teams, and talk about how customers are using Office 365 to collaborate and deliver great results.

The post Join us for an online event to celebrate the global availability of Microsoft Teams appeared first on Office Blogs.

Continue reading Join us for an online event to celebrate the global availability of Microsoft Teams→