Microsoft Will Slowly Open Up Game Development to Xbox Users

In the first incarnation, games developed using the free tools will be available only to like-minded hobbyists, not the Xbox community as a whole. Those who want to develop games will have to pay a $99 fee to be part of a "Creators' Club," a name that is likely to change. Games developed using XNA Game Studio Express will be playable only by others who are part of the club.

Next spring, Microsoft hopes to have a broader set of tools that will allow for games to be created that can then be sold online through Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade. Microsoft will still control which games get published, and it'll get a cut of the revenue.

Down the road, probably three to five years from now, Microsoft hopes to have an open approach, where anyone can publish games, and community response helps separate the hits from the flops.

That would mark a major shift in the gaming world. While people have long been able to create their own PC software, console game titles have historically been created by a far more limited set of developers.