Michael Klucher's Blog

We haven’t been totally slacking off over the months of December and January. In fact soon Premium Creators will be getting a Title Update to XNA Game Studio Connect which, among other things, will allow better testing of your game before it goes live on Xbox LIVE Community Games.

Many of you have reported subtle differences (and in some case crashes) in the way your game behaves when playing from XNA Game Studio Connect versus the way it works on Xbox LIVE Community Games. When we set out to release XNA Game Studio 3.0 we worked hard to provide a very consistent experience between them. After we launched user-feedback helped us discover a few things Creators really needed to be able to test when developing and even peer-reviewing a game.

With this feedback we’ve added some new functionality that brings the XNA Game Studio Connect experience even closer to the experience consumers get when running an Xbox LIVE Community Game. Specifically:

• Splash Screen: When running the game from your console in XNA Game Studio Connect, you’ll now see a splash screen much like the one you see when you play a Xbox LIVE Community Game. While the splash screen is intended not to affect the functionality of your game, you can now test it to be sure, as we found a small issue with this in XNA Game Studio 3.0. Note that the splash screen will not display when debugging from XNA Game Studio. 

• Trial Expiration Screen: You’ll now be able to test the Trial Expiration Screen from XNA Game Studio Connect. This can only be activated by selecting “Play Trial Game” from the Xbox 360. When the game is launched this way, after the trial time has expired (which is currently 8 minutes) Creators will see a similar expiration screen like a consumer does.

  You can then test what it would be like to purchase the game (which will set Guide.IsTrialMode to false) and continue playing as well as make sure that your game behaves properly when the screen displays and the game was purchased. You also have the option to exit the game as a consumer would. Additionally as a peer reviewer it now provides you a more thorough way to test the game to make sure it works as you would expect with trial games! 

  It’s also worth noting that while you must wait the full amount of time to see the expiration screen, you can still call Guide.ShowMarketplace to walk through purchasing your game at any time. This allows you to test other scenarios, such as purchasing the game from UI that exists in your game or from your own “up sell” screen.

We’ll let everyone know when the update goes live, but we expect it to be available within the next few weeks. This update is meant to be a targeted fix that provides you with the features needed to fully test the way your game behaves so there are no surprises when your game goes up on Xbox LIVE Community Games. If you have additional features that you think would be useful for testing, please let us know by adding a suggestion on Microsoft Connect site!