Xbox Live Homebrew Game – Winners

Microsoft has today revealed the winners of its “Dream-Build-Play” competition, where people were invited to make a game for PC or Xbox 360 Live Arcade using the XNA^® Game Studio development tool, which is essentially an evolution of the visual C# Express programming language. Tied for first place were David Flook of Ontario, Canada, and James Silva of New York with their respective games: “Blazing Birds,” an action-packed, robotic sports game modeled after the game of badminton, and “The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai,” a highly stylized game of mayhem and revenge. For their accomplishments, Flook and Silva were offered publishing contracts with Xbox LIVE Arcade, $10,000 (U.S.) each and several other prizes. Steve Olofsson of Sweden and Daniel McGuire of the United Kingdom received honors as runners-up for their games: “Gravitron Ultra” and “Yo Ho Kablammo!” respectively. Because of the amazing creativity demonstrated by these top four winners, the Xbox LIVE Arcade team also extended invitations to publish on Xbox LIVE Arcade to Olofsson and McGuire, along with $5,000 (U.S.) and other prizes.

A total of 16 others were recognized with third-place honors. More than 4,500 members of the gaming community from more than 100 countries enrolled in the Dream-Build-Play challenge. Final results have been posted on the Dream-Build-Play Web site at http://dreambuildplay.com.

“The games we received in the Dream-Build-Play competition are truly inspiring,” said Chris Satchell, general manager of the XNA organization at Microsoft. “Created in just four short months using XNA Game Studio, these games demonstrate an incredible range of innovation, fun gameplay and technical achievement.”

“We uncovered some remarkable talent with this contest and are pleased to include these original creations in our diverse library of games on Xbox LIVE Arcade,” said Bryan Trussel, director of content and portals for Microsoft Casual Games. “It’s aspiring, independent developers like these who are really driving our industry.”

Lets just hope they release these games to everyone not just the US like Aegis Wing, which us European gamers have to download using a fake gamertag.