But i did wonder how many games would be wanting to push to CG so soon. Im just guessing but won't some of the games still either need work.. or the author just wants to add more first before submitting to CG

Having said that if we get 100 cool games at launch i wont be complaining :D

The ZMan:

"invited to join"?? What does that mean - everyone can play in the community games space... seems like an odd thing to put.

I don't think it's odd at all. I live in Sweden and don't know when I will have the opportunity to release my game to CG, I would be extremly happy if I got to release it sooner.

The ZMan:

"invited to join"?? What does that mean - everyone can play in the community games space... seems like an odd thing to put.

There are a lot of countries that won't be able to participate in the launch.

The ZMan:

What does that mean - everyone can play in the community games space... seems like an odd thing to put.

All CG submissions must be in XNA3. All DBP submissions are in XNA2. It sounds to me like they're saying they'll allow certain DBP entrants to submit an XNA2 build to CG, which is a nice little special consideration.

I'm guessing they're concerned about the number of submissions for CG launch, and want to have a solid lineup, so they're looking at the general high quality of DBP submissions (many of these games look great) and mitigating risk by hand-selecting a few of the better ones. Another possibility: up to ten semi-finalists may be offered XBLA contracts, but they have more than ten games in the running that look saleable, so they want an ability to expand their support for these games.

In any case, I think the motivation for this probably comes from the sheer volume of high-quality games submitted to DBP this year. There are a lot of games in the gallery that I'd buy if they were up on the marketplace, and I don't think that's escaped anyone's attention.

CDarklock:

All CG submissions must be in XNA3. All DBP submissions are in XNA2. It sounds to me like they're saying they'll allow certain DBP entrants to submit an XNA2 build to CG, which is a nice little special consideration.

I'm guessing that it's partly to let the great looking games outside of the immediately allowed countries to play and, very doubtful but possible, somehow allowing those invited to deploy/test on their Xbox 360 earlier than others so that XBLCG has a set of high quality games right at launch. Considering peer review takes a minimum two days it seems (that "processing" part after everyone reviews your game), the team probably wants to get a head start so that they don't have an empty XBLCG channel for a couple of days.

Who knows exactly what it'll be. I just hope I get an invite.   :)

Nick Gravelyn:

I'd highly doubt that. XNA GS 3 brings all the trial APIs so your game couldn't be made to work under their trial system.

That's a point I hadn't considered... but isn't the trial system designed to wrap your game, so you don't actually need to use that API? Maybe it works just fine with XNA2.

I do think you're probably right about the main concern being a full channel at launch, so there are actually good games there for people to buy. That initial window is critical for a new service.

Kobingo:

The ZMan:

"invited to join"?? What does that mean - everyone can play in the community games space... seems like an odd thing to put.

I don't think it's odd at all. I live in Sweden and don't know when I will have the opportunity to release my game to CG, I would be extremly happy if I got to release it sooner.

Winterhell:

Kobingo:

The ZMan:

"invited to join"?? What does that mean - everyone can play in the community games space... seems like an odd thing to put.

I don't think it's odd at all. I live in Sweden and don't know when I will have the opportunity to release my game to CG, I would be extremly happy if I got to release it sooner.

 

my situation is similar,but here in Bulgaria there isn't even official Xbox Live support ,so i'm counting on explicit publishing from Microsoft :)

MS promised to add support and other countries. We wait.

I think contracts will be more than 10...