The other day Mark sent me a link to Wired, basically talking about how indie games were looking to be a big deal this year.  The article really played up the fact that the Playstation 3 seems to be leading in this particular department.  That bummed me out a bit.  I hate being a Microsoft fanboy, but I started playing around with XNA way back when it first came out.  The indie game idea seemed really cool, especially with the ability to deploy to one of the latest generation of consoles.  But after reading that article I was feeling like the XBOX 360 and Microsoft had missed the boat.  XNA came out a while ago, and here we are able to create games, but we aren't really able to share them.  Well apparently that is changing.  Soon....

The quick version:  Microsoft is adding the ability for developers to publish their games to XBOX Live.  What they are calling "Subscriber Peers" (I'm guessing these are Creators Club members?) will be able to download the games, play them, and review them.  If the games "pass" (what all goes into "passing", I don't know), they will be added to the global catalog on the XBOX Live Marketplace....meaning available to anybody.  If you want to read more, go here:  http://forums.xna.com/ShowThread.aspx?PostID=46554

A preview starts YESTERDAY!  It's available now.  Not the full blown system listed above, but a preview.  You can download the game launcher for free, right now.  RIGHT NOW!  It's only available until Feb 24th.  So go get it.  You can then play seven preview games.  One was the winner of last year's Dream Build Play contest.  My favorite happens to be the Jelly Car game.  It's super simple, and super fun.  Try them all.

Did I mention it's only available for another couple of days?  Go get it!