Tag Archives: Chris Satchell

As expected, Microsoft has announced DirectX 11 at its US Gamefest event.

The software will be backwards compatible with DX10 hardware. There doesn’t appear to have been a release date announced for it.

“We want to break away from purely having a paradigm of pixels, vertices and shaders,” said XNA boss Chris Satchell, speaking in his keynote at the event. “DX11 is totally compatible with DX10. There’s not that 9/10 discontinuity we created before.”

Satchell also explained the delay in switching from 32-bit to 64-bit architecture is a software problem.

“We’ve been shipping 64-bit CPUs on the hardware side for awhile,” he said. “We’re not at the point where the 64-bit OS is catching up. I think we are [there] in the next six to eight months.”

Thanks Gaming Today and Gama.

Microsoft will start selling user-created games on Xbox Live this autumn, the firm announced today, at three different prices – the equivalent of $2.50, $5 or $10.

Up to 70 percent of the revenue will be split with the games’ creators. As is already known, any game to make it to the store and be valid for sale will need to pass a peer-review system.

“Not only are we democratizing game development with Xbox Live Community Games later this year, but we’re creating an opportunity for aspiring developers,” said XNA tech boss, Chris Satchell.

Remember that you have to be a member of the XNA Creators Club to be able to make a game applicable for Live sale, and that costs $99 per year.

Big news. Loads more here.

XNA boss Chris Satchell has said in an interview with GI that digital distribution will create a new type of games publisher.

“With the release of community games distribution I think we will see a new class of micro-community-’publishers’ – small community teams that publish their work exclusively on Xbox Live,” said Satchell.

“This means more diversity of content for gamers, a huge audience for up-and-coming developers and new creativity and talent in the industry, talent that will also fuel growth at large publishers.”

Full interview through the link.

By Mike Bowden

In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, XNA general manager Chris Satchell revealed that Microsoft has been looking into the third dimension. Calling it “extremely interesting,” he raised our hopes just high enough to send them screaming back down to earth moments later.

“This is a very interesting area of graphics technology,” he said. “We have done experiments with this at Microsoft and the results are extremely interesting. However, the current systems that work well require wearing active shutter glasses and I think it is hard to be mainstream with asking people to wear headgear to play games.”

However, he also noted that new technology, which we’re dubbing head-free 3D, is in the works right now. We imagine, then, that it’s only a matter of time until Master Chief will be able to pop right out of your TV, lower a gleeful gaze in your direction, and stick you.

By Nathan Grayson

Speaking at Gamehorizon in Newcastle this morning, Microsoft’s XNA boss, Chris Satchell, has said that user generated content can be responsibly rated by an audience of its creators’ peers – and doesn’t need any intervention from the BBFC or PEGI.

“PEGI and the BBFC simply are not going to be able to rate community content. We have to work out a way to police ourselves to avoid huge regulatory pressure,” he said. “The core of Creators Club Online take it very seriously. If you give the community tools, they act responsibly.”

More on MCV.

Speaking to Eurogamer, Chris Satchell, XNA group manager at Microsoft, has said that he believes Sony – as well as othere companies – is walking on thin ice by allowing users to upload content to its online services.

“I think there’s a potential risk on any platform… where you’re running in what we call native mode, where you’re writing straight to the metal, not a sandbox layer like XNA, and then that runs a script engine and you let people do that in that script engine,” he said.

“Any platform that let’s you do that, and doesn’t have the right security measures in place – whether it’s Sony, whether it’s Nintendo, whether it’s Apple, whether it’s anyone – you’re inviting trouble, because sooner or later someone will want to prove they can do it.”

These quotes are from a broader interview to be found here.