Microsoft Wants to Pay YOU to Make Xbox 360 Games

Want to make money developing Xbox 360 games? Here is your chance. Microsoft launched "Xbox Live Community Games" today with the hope of attracting game coders to create Xbox games, post them to the site, and earn money when people buy them.

Here is how it works. First become a member of the XNA Creators Club, use the XNA Game Studio toolset to develop the game, and submit your creation to Microsoft which will "rigorously peer-review" your creation. If your game has the right stuff it'll be added to the Xbox Live Marketplace catalog for one of three chosen price points of between $2.50 and $10.

Games sales net developers up to 70 percent of the revenue their games generate. The Community Games channel will launch this fall in the United States, Canada and select European locations, with others to follow in 2009. Microsoft expects by the end of the year an influx of user-created games will result in a total Xbox 360 gaming library of over 1000 titles. This takes into consideration the community games, Xbox Live Arcade titles and games at retail.

Tied to this is a Dream-Build-Play game development contest based upon XNA Game Studio projects. Microsoft says prizes for the winners will be in "excess of $70,000." The bigger prize though is that one of the winners will be offered an Xbox Live Arcade publishing contract.

It looks to be a good time to be an amateur Xbox 360 game developer. I wonder how my idea of a "tech writer creates his own tech publishing empire" game might fly? Hmmm.....

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