7 Free Xbox Live Arcade Games Today
Perhaps lost in the shuffle of Gears of War 2 is the announcement that community-created games developed via XNA Game Studio 2 will be available to download via Xbox Live. Seven (7) of these games will be available free! Here are the 7 coming sometime today. One quick note…this games are available to play for a limited time only. Once you download, you’ll have 17 days of play.
Here’s how to access the games (thx HazyCloud):
*Xbox 360 HDD Required* Download the XNA Creators Club Game Launcher in order to play the special preview selection of game demos created by the community using XNA Game Studio. When your download is complete, go to the Games Library, select My Games, and navigate to the XNA Creators Club category along the top. From there, press Y to view, download, and play the available trial games for this limited period.
JellyCar - Created by Walaber from the United States, this game is about driving a squishy car through squishy worlds, trying to reach the exit.
Little Gamers - This is a 2-D high definition action side-scroller based on the famous Web comic “Little Gamers” created by Loïc Dansart, a 24-year-old software developer from Belgium.
Dishwasher - An intense 2-D action platform game created by James Silva from the United States, “Dishwasher” has a unique, highly stylized look and fast and fluid action.
TriLinea - This puzzle game created by Edison S. Prata Jr., Renato Pelizzari da Silva and Davi da Silva Prata from Brazil mixes fast-paced action with strategy.
RocketBall - Created by Tyler Wanlass, Patrick Murty and Todd Barrons of the United States, this neighborhood game of dodgeball explodes onto the street with fast-paced multiplayer action.
ProximityHD - This game, created by Brian Cable from the United States, takes the essence of strategy games — battles for control of territory and armies — and distills it down to a simple, easy-to-understand set of rules for casual players.
Culture - Created by independent game development company Hidden Path Entertainment from the United States, “Culture” contains challenging games and puzzles based on beautiful flowers.
As the first in the industry to pioneer high-speed online gaming and high-definition games, Xbox 360 once again broke new ground by introducing a new, open distribution service for games created by the community and soon playable by its 10 million Xbox LIVE members. Community-created games on Xbox LIVE will quickly double the size of the Xbox 360 game library. By the end of 2008, Xbox 360 owners will have access to more than 1,000 games, making it the largest, most creatively diverse library across all next-generation platforms.
“The time has come for the games industry to open its doors to all game creators, enabling anyone to share their creations with the world,” said John Schappert, corporate vice president of LIVE, Software and Services for the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft. “Our goal is to drive a creative and social revolution in games with the same transformative power that we’ve seen in digital music and video sharing.”
February 20th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Thats awesome!
February 20th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Well, this double the size of my arcade collection.
February 20th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Thats awesome i just checked and there not up yet but ill def download them
February 20th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Do they have achievements?
February 20th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Good question Nu but free is always good LOL.
February 20th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Deacon, you’ll need to download the XNA games launcher from the Marketplace to get these games.
Taken from Major Nelson’s blog
*Xbox 360 HDD Required* Download the XNA Creators Club Game Launcher in order to play the special preview selection of game demos created by the community using XNA Game Studio. When your download is complete, go to the Games Library, select My Games, and navigate to the XNA Creators Club category along the top. From there, press Y to view, download, and play the available trial games for this limited period.
February 20th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
It also mentions these games are trials. My guess is no achievements.
February 20th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Ok guys I figured out how to get the games now. Its rly complicated so here are the steps
Go to the Game Store
Go to All Games
Go up so you get the the X’s Faster
Click on XNA Creators Club
Download XNA Creators Club Game Launcher
Make sure its the creators club game launcher
Now once thats done downloading go to the games blade
Click Games Library then go to My Games
Scroll over tto XNA Creators Club and press the “Y” button
February 20th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
I’ll have to give these a look for sure…
February 20th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
I only have one question, US only?
February 20th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
@ Intangible 360:
Availability: Not available in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan
February 20th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Cool, yeah I just downloaded them, I’ll have to try them out soon.
February 20th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Do I have to buy a Creator’s club membership to play these games?
February 20th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
SO these are trial games only?
February 20th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
this shit only gives my xbox hiccups. I restarted my xbox after it froze for the third time again,and now i’m staring to the little loading xbox icon to load my Blades…. 3 minutes already.. never doing this XNA stuff again !
February 20th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
Lawl: the “loading xbox icon” to load your dashboard blades is because Xbox Live is being SLAMMED right now. Think Christmas.
Nu
February 20th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
I think this may have potential but I have a feeling that there will be a lot of junk games to sift through to find the good game that I imagine will be few and far between. I will have to give this a try. From what I read, it looks like it is available to anyone with a live membership (not sure about silver).
It also doesn’t look like there will be achievements which I can understand and probably agree with unless MS were in charge of making the achievements and ensuring that they work.
February 20th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Is this available in UK
February 20th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
dont know nuangel, i’ve had this once before, my whole history is gone too.
February 20th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Cool I might check them out.
February 20th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
i wish i new how to code games i downloaded it a while ago and tried it is very confusing.
February 20th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
thx Hazy. i updated the article. and that was a bit misleading. trials are always free but i guess since they’ll be XNA and not Xbox Live Arcade they have the potential to charge for trials.
February 20th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
overall the games are certainly varied. I tried the culture and rocketball trials so far. Culture was pretty cool but rocketball seems really stupid to me
February 21st, 2008 at 12:37 am
Jellycar and Dishwasher are the best ones so far.
February 21st, 2008 at 1:49 am
Dishwasher is teh shit!
February 21st, 2008 at 1:50 am
you guys need to go to sleep!
February 21st, 2008 at 7:29 am
So far I’ve only tried Culture and its pretty cool. Bummed that its limited download and limited time to play.
February 22nd, 2008 at 7:51 am
played Dishwasher. it was cool. i’ll try to play the rest before time runs out.
March 2nd, 2008 at 4:54 pm
I hope that the user games will have 200 achevments points just like normal XBLA games