No Free XNA Community Games

As details continue to pour on out regarding XNA Community Games, I pointed out that Microsoft made no mention of being able to release a game for free. That news has been confirmed by MTV Multiplayer in an interview with (former head of XNA and now CTO) Chris Satchell and new XNA head Boyd Multerer.

The two emphasized that, unlike existing platforms like Xbox Live Arcade, WiiWare and PlayStation Network, Community Games is going to emphasize having as much as content as possible. That naturally means lots of crap, but the hope is that the good stuff will rise up to the top, and that’s why there are going to be trials of every game.

“One of the goals of the entire program has always been to have the greatest diversity and the greatest amount of content coming through,” said Multerer. “We very purposely don’t want to be trying to guess what’s going to be a good game and what’s not, and preventing people from coming in. We’re not going to say no to any games that follow the terms of service. We’re going to let the community completely manage what games go in and how quickly.”

I’m actually glad that Microsoft won’t be filtering games out because they don’t approve. Doing that stifles innovation because developers don’t want their games to be rejected, so they go the safe route. For all the crappy games we’ll be seeing, it’ll also lead to some of the mind-blowingly original stuff, which I’m looking forward to.

It’s just a shame that none of it will be free.