If you're an independent musician looking for as many ways to sell and promote your music as possible, and you or a friend has some experience with software development, you'll want to check out the upcoming Rock Band Network, for which Harmonix and MTV Games plan to begin beta testing in late August.
It's more complicated than posting a song to iTunes, but you'll get placement on a more exclusive platform.
(Credit: MTV Games)To program songs for the game, you or your developer friend first needs a membership to Microsoft's XNA Creators' Club, which was launched a couple years ago to let independent developers create casual games to sell through the Xbox Live Marketplace; a membership costs $49.99 for four months or $99.99 for a year.
You'll then be able to get free tools and instructions from the Rock Band Creators Web site to convert your master recordings to the MIDI charts used by the game. Next, you'll have to submit your song for other creators to critique and finally to MTV Games for approval.
Once approved, the song will enter the Rock Band Network. All songs will debut exclusively for 30 days on the Xbox 360, and the Rock Band team will pick stand-out songs to make available to the Sony PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii consoles.
Under the network terms, musicians can charge between 50 cents and $3 per song, and they will keep a 30 percent cut of all sales. That may seem small, compared with the 70 percent cut musicians get for selling their songs on iTunes, which requires much less work, but Rock Band is a much more exclusive platform--you're much more likely to stand out here than among the bazillion songs available through Apple's music store.
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Nintendo's WiiWare launched on Monday with six games from a series of developers.
(Credit: Nintendo)Nintendo on Monday put its latest shot across the bow of Microsoft and Sony when it officially launched WiiWare, its new online repository of downloadable games.
Ostensibly a service where Wii gamers will be able to shop for new, independent games, WiiWare seems to be Nintendo's answer to Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade and its XNA Studio and to Sony's PlayStation Store.
WiiWare is launching with six games: Square Enix's Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King, Frontier Development's LostWinds, XGen Studios' Defend your Castle, Nnooo's Pop, High Voltage Software's V.I.P. Casino: Blackjack, and Gameloft's TV Show King.
Nintendo said it would add new games to WiiWare each Monday.
In February, Nintendo said in an interview with CNET News.com sister site, GameSpot.com, that there were as many as 100 WiiWare games in development.
And while many gamers would surely like to see more games in the system at launch, the fact that there are so many in the pipeline already means that Nintendo will likely not have to worry about populating the service with new weekly titles for some time.
For independent developers, the service also provides a new avenue for getting their work in front of gamers--and on a new platform. Microsoft has been very aggressive with using its XNA platform as a way of bringing independently created games to the Xbox community, and now Nintendo will be able to compete for some of those developers' time.
The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai game, developed in XNA Studio for XBox and potentially...Zune.
(Credit: Ska Studios)
Microsoft's announcement at today's Game Developer's Conference made some waves in the gaming community, but for the growing faction of Zune owners, it felt like an exciting glimpse into the product's future.
While Microsoft hasn't made any formal announcements regarding games coming to the Zune, they dropped a big hint today when they demonstrated a game developed using XNA Studio running on a Zune 80. Its a move that makes plenty of sense, considering that Apple has been slowly and steadily releasing games for the Zune's competitor, the iPod. Gaming on the Zune also capitalizes on a theme Microsoft already has some credibility with, by way of XBox 360.
We might not know when Microsoft will start releasing games for the Zune, or how much they will cost, but we have some idea of what types of games will be released. The following list of XNA games and descriptions is quoted from Microsoft's XBox 360 site (videos via YouTube):... Read more
In the movie industry, there is a prevalence of rehashed sure-fire "hits" churned out by studios. The same goes for video games these days. Almost no one wants to take big risks when you need up to three years to develop a video game, which is why there are so many II and IIIs.
But in the movie industry, cheaper high-end camcorders and better video-sharing sites have also boosted the capability and exposure of indie filmmakers everywhere. Now the same may become possible for indie video game developers.
Microsoft has released XNA Game Studio Express 1.0, free, downloadable software that lets hobbyists create their own Xbox games. (Microsoft says XNA stands for "XNA's Not Acronymed.") Unfortunately, the games can't be shared unless you subscribe to Microsoft's new XNA Creators Club, which costs $99 for the year, or $49 for four months.
To kick off the free software and paid subscription service, Microsoft is running a contest for the best video games created by XNA Game Studio. "Dream-Build-Play " will start in January. The winning game will appear in the Xbox Live Arcade.
The hope is that Microsoft will be able to create a YouTube-like game-sharing site.
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