ARTICLE: "GATES TAKES ON SONY AND NINTENDO"

GameIndustry.biz has published an article that summarizes Bill Gates' comments -interviewed by Dean Takahashi of the San Jose Mercury News, regarding how good the different strategies of the major console makers are doing so far, in his opinion of course.

As an indie, and from now on I will only refer to the 'game development' side of the story, I agree that the XBOX360 will do great since MS has decided to make the "development transition" easy for us: XNA.

I mean, the easier they make it for developers, the more developer's attention -and projects- they'll get, and ultimately, the more games will be created and released for their console.

If -in addition- "easy" includes "cheapper", the better.

Please do not misunderstand me, I'm not saying with this that console makers should make less restrictive the quality assurance policies and controls for commercial games. All I am saying is don't forget "indies", thus, help us produce for your consoles by providing better and affordable tools and frameworks, reducing the cost of game development (including time and effort as a "cost").

XNA GSE goes in that way, the right way imho ... ;)

ANIBOOM AWARDS 2006: FINALISTS HAVE BEEN ANNOUNCED!

At last! 25 animation pieces got into the finals -5 per category, and now they're facing the ultimate challenge: becoming the topmost ranked piece to get the biggest prize of all.

Remember! There's also a prize for each category's winner so you'd better start voting a.s.a.p.

Congrats to the ones who made it and good luck! ... yeah, right (my "crappy" entry didn't make it ... snif! ... snif!)

You all now my favorite: go Tadeo go! "Prime Time" is a very good one, too ... of course, mine was better than both ... or at least I wish ... :)

See ya ... ;)

I'M BACK ...

Yes, it's true. Please don't cry: you knew I would continue to terrify you with my "regular" posts ... :)

My short holidays are now gone, so back to work, filtering email messages, daily worries, and, ... well, you all know ... :(

Anyway, it was good while it lasted ... ;)

What has been going on in the XNA world? A LOT! At least, according to XNAtutorial's Weekly Update: new sites, new source codes and new tutorials. The list is impressive.

In other news: Shawn Hargreaves' has yesterday announced that a new blog from another XNA-Team member has kicked off, Dean (Johnson)'s XNA Blog, with an opening article that discusses the math to rotate 3D objects (a great way to start, IMHO).

Also, I must tell you that the week before I started my holidays I was checking a couple of sites with tutorials worth following:

• The Ramblings of a Hazy Mind: you'll find quite handy articles about 3D, scene management and XNA -not only for starters. Michael's has posted his 11th tutorial for a Complete Octree Functionality in XNA, and
• Riemer's XNA Tutorial: great series of articles from the grounds up now mainly related to XNA; you will still find the old ones for C# and Managed DirectX (as well as for C++, and VB). Also, pay a visit to Riemer's forum for news, corrections, suggestions, questions and general topics.

Remember one of my last yearend's posts "XNA: COUPLE OF NEW FRAMEWORKS"? Well, people in the XNA Community is now becoming aware and or starting to pay more attention to 'XNA Magic'. Told ya, the demo videos catch one's attention, indeed.

Any news regarding the "Dream, Build, Play" contest? I have checked the site but there's no additional info yet about the exact starting date of the contest, deadlines, prizes, rules, etc.

Well, that's pretty much it, don't you think? A lot to check & read, so I better start a.s.a.p.

'till next time!

[BTW, thanks Lawrence (a.k.a. 'Sharky') for your support to my blog ... ;) ]