Democratizing distribution

Well, the keynote to fire off the conference was given by John Schappert, an ex EA employee who is now the Microsoft Corporate Vice President. There were a lot of interesting things - Ninja Gaiden 2, Gears of War 2, Fable 2 (lots of sequels, actually). But the thing that was really interesting to me was the announcement of Xbox Live Community - a venue for anyone who takes the initiative to write a game in XNA to share their game on Xbox Live, have it rated by peers, and playable by the tens of millions of people with 360s. That, and that XNA will now be playable on PC, 360, and on the Zune out of the box! I'm sure it's not flawless in practise, but it's an absolutely awesome idea that I would love to see take off. I hope this is actually a step towards the industry opening up and respecting the fact that anyone out there can have a killer game idea, and let those passionate people go out there and create their own games for their friends to play. Let the gamers become developers and protoype ideas they think are cool. I really hope this becomes a totally open, self-regulating community, because I think it could be really powerful. Hell, I'm working at a company where we make multi-million dollar big titles, and I feel inspired to spend my time at home making little, simple fun games - the games I dreamt about in college :) Here's hoping this lets other people out there to do the same.

I guess I am starting to get a little more inspired about where we're going as an industry, so this trip may very well be succeeding with its goals :)