Microsoft Gives XNA and More To Young Programmers
Announced today, through what is called the DreamSpark program, as many as 1 billion high school and college students alike will be given access to Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition, Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition and XNA Game Studio 2.0.
The students are also eligible for a free 12-month academic membership to the XNA Creators Club; so long as their studies include technology, design, math science and engineering.
As of now, it’s only available to college students in the U.S., Canada, China, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the U.K.
The plan is to extend the project to high school students and students in Australia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Japan, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia, Asia and Europe, by Q3 2008.
I see this initiative as an intelligent way to capture quite a bit of game talent that may potentially end up on XBLA. If all 1 billion attempt to make a game and 95% is pure dogshit, there’s still the potential for 5% really innovative, creative games akin to Everyday Shooter, Crayon Physics and Audiosurf.
Let’s just hope this comes to fruition, the 360 is badly in need of indie titles on XBLA.
Source: Microsoft
Our thanks go to Leathersoup.
