Microsoft Keynoting GDC Next Month
By Chris on Wednesday, January 16th, 2008 at 6:28 PM PST In Game Companies, Game Consoles, Game Platforms, Gamer Life, Games Industry, Microsoft, Microsoft
This year’s Game Developers Conference will feature two keynotes, one of which will be presented by John Schappert, the Microsoft corporate VP of Live. His keynote will be entitled “A Future Wide Open: Unleashing the Creative Community,” which makes me think that Microsoft has seen what tremendous support Sony has garnered through the concept of LittleBigPlanet.
We’re guaranteed to get some sort of big news from the keynote, as the GDC website describes the keynote as:
Schappert’s keynote explores the Xbox 360 platform’s next step in democratizing game development, vastly opening up the industry for developers of all sizes. The session will set the strategy for Xbox 360 this upcoming year, revealing top developers’ plans for the platform in 2008. Schappert will discuss how the increasing role of online gaming will continue to shape gameplay and game distribution this year.
As Game|Life emphasizes, the line about “revealing top developers’ plans for the platform in 2008” could turn out to be huge as we find out what Microsoft is banking on to help sustain sales of the Xbox 360.
Could we see an announcement about Live becoming more of an open platform that will be more user-created content friendly? It’s a possibility I certainly hope comes true, but I won’t be holding my breath. Something involving XNA seems like an absolute no-brainer, though.
This year’s GDC is taking place next month in San Francisco.
