Getting a shot at the GDC spotlight certainly sounds exciting. Unleashing the citizens of the Interweb on console gaming is going to be very interesting.

My man Michael Klucher ( who was up all night incidentally, as was Dean) has more of the info you need to know on the release of XNA Game Studio 2.0: http://blogs.msdn.com/xna/archive/2007/12/13/xna-game-studio-2-0-released.aspx

And once you’ve absorbed the new features of the framework and tools, put them to great use in the Dream Build Play contest! Finalists get cash, the chance to intern at Microsoft Research, Lionhead or Rare Game studios, the chance to show off your game at the Game Developers Conference (GDC).

I was so stoked to see the last finalists’ games. Even if you don’t want money, glory, or a new job related to games, make this little pm happy over here in the blogosphere. I loved what people came up with that no one ever expected. They were very addicting. :)_

Live it vivid!

(Betsy Aoki)

Tuesday next, you may suddenly find yourself with more friends than you ever knew you had. The coming Xbox dashboard update will give you the ability to browse the friends list of everyone you know on Xbox Live (similar to Facebook), allowing you to pillage their social networks in order to stockpile your own massive squadron of fellow gamers. It would be wise to keep logged in to Xbox.com in order to manage the influx of friend requests.

(Xbox Live going social - Steve Clayton)

The XNA team will make their Game Studio 2.0 beta available for download soon, and according to the team’s blog post last week, feature complete. One of the more exciting features coming is support for network games between Xbox 360 consoles and Windows machines. Live Anywhere, as this ability was originally dubbed at E3 last year, is an architecture to allow games to interact across any platform available (desktops, consoles, and mobile devices).

The first game to ship that supported Live Anywhere was Shadowrun, which PC Gamer felt wasn’t all it could be. It seems clear that development of the game was focused primarily on proving the cross-platform concept, and hopefully future implementations of Live Anywhere won’t sacrifice sheer entertainment.

Enter the soon-to-be released XNA 2.0 beta. By providing game developers of every stripe the ability to provide network gaming between my friend Dan at his desk, and myself on the couch, we each will be able to have our preferred experience. A brief word to developers: might I recommend starting small? Build a port of Drug Wars that I can play with a couple mates, then worry about the flashy graphics.

(Network Gaming with XNA - Ed Dunhill’s Blog)

(XNA Team Blog)

UNSC troops engaged the enemy after sundown Monday.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, 26 September 2507 - Millions of Covenant forces are dead this morning after bloody battles in the pre-dawn hours on Monday erupted all across Earth. Skirmishes on the beaches of Zanzibar and High Ground, the deep canyon of Valhalla, and the frozen tundra at Snowbound are being referred to as puric victories by many, while the official kill count crossed 448 million Covenant dead (as of press time).

Fire teams suffered heavy loses throughout initial battles.

UNSC officer Jason Mauer has been retisent in his statements after yesterday’s first engagements with the violent alien race on our home planet. Said a high-ranking crewmember aboard The Dawn, “Our initial engagement is being considered a success by leadership, thanks in large part to the recruitment and training of younger UNSC marines.”

From left: S. Lyons, N. Kawasaki, T. Juanitos, and N. Kawasaki.

One of the youngest Marine fire teams was lead by the brothers Nic and Noah Kawaski, with Sean Lyons and Trevor Juanitos. This baby-faced ‘Team Truemors‘ rose above the fray as an elite team, with the more seasoned group of Alex Tramiel, Anjay Patel, James Squires, and Justin Scottlemyer following close behind.

Casualties were high, though U.N. officials would not report exact figures.

While it is still unknown how much damage was inflicted on the Covenant, a United Nations Security Council closed session has been scheduled for 15:00 this afternoon. It is believed that this special meeting will revolve around how the Earth campaign can maintain current levels of success throughout the year. U.N. Official Anand Iyer has said that fire teams from Monday’s violence will be given some special consideration moving forward.

Young recruits were the largest factor for success.

Exact details about future campaigns were not made available to press, though multiple sources within the Green Zone pointed towards a stepped up UNSC presence over the coming months.

Spent shell casings and MREs litter the battlefields today.

Who is this man with such a name you might be asking? Well if you’ve ever woken up in a cold sweat with the words Killing Spree ringing in your ears, you have Cliffy B to blame. He’s the Lead Designer for Epic Games, the team who built the Unreal series, and will soon unleash Gears of War onto the unwashed Xbox 360 owners.

The interview Tina got out of him is a really interesting and informative look at game development.

In 7 days around E3, Xbox Live delivered a great deal of content. Trailers for Halo 3 and Nacho Libre were viewed by over a million people, as well as add-on game content and celebrity multiplayer sessions. And keep in mind most of this content, if not all of it, is presented in High-Definition.

During those 7 days, over 600 terabytes of data were pushed out to Xbox Live members (The Library of Congress contains about 20 terabytes of printed material). It should then come as no surprise that Xbox Live is now the largest High-Definition On-Demand platform. On the other hand though, Sony’s got…

(via PC Vs Console)

Looks like next week is for the gamers. A major update to the Xbox 360 is coming down the pipe, and it looks glorious. The night owls at Joystiq got the inside scoop from Aaron Greenberg at Xbox Live.

There will be some simple menu changes, perahps the most useful being a ‘Newly Released…’ item for videos, games, and everything else. The update will also provide the ability to download up to six items in the background, something I can’t believe anyone has lived without until now. Also included are some usability enhancements, like setting your system to launch directly to the Dashboard on power-on and “full” USB keyboard support (aka wireless USB keyboard support).

Now that the cat’s out of the bag on this, I’m hoping we’ll get a walkthrough posted on 10 this coming week.