Microsoft announced plans to make entry-level development with XNA available on the PC for free, and on the Xbox 360 for a yearly fee of $99. As many of you probably know, GarageGames is involved with Microsofts new XNA Game Studio Express. They announced that they will be releasing an XNA-compliant version of its Torque game development environment, which consists of the Torque Shader Engine for 3D development and the Torque Game Builder for 2D development. The Microsoft hosted Gamefest 2006 kicked off yesterday, and with that, a few new videos from Garage Games. They both look pretty cool (but are boring due to lack of sound). One video featured two character models doing some familiar animations. The second video shows off more of the Atlas terrain engine, skiing and a new weapon model we have not seen before.
Shacknews also got an interview with GarageGames’ CEO/CTO Joshua Williams and President Mark Frohnmayer:
Shack: On that end user side of things, does GarageGames have any new games in the works, or are you guys pretty full up with work on your development tools right now?
Mark Frohnmayer: For games? We do have a couple things that we can’t talk about just yet. [laughs]
Joshua Williams: We got a couple things brewing.
Mark Frohnmayer: We’re about to release our first actual legimitate casual game that we developed in house. It just went into beta last week. We’re about to release a new set of levels for Marble Blast Ultra on Xbox 360. We did a whole new set of multiplayer maps that are actually a lot of fun. Then we have another game that’s in the early stages of development that’s going to totally rock. We will give you much more information on that as we get closer.
Shack: Anything related to Tribes? I’m sure you guys get asked that every day.
Mark Frohnmayer: It actually is in a lot of ways a gameplay homage to Tribes, but it’s a very different genre.
Joshua Williams: It’s going to be cool.
Mark Frohnmayer: It will be cool.
The full interview can be read here.