Distributing games for Xbox360

summary

Learn how to distribute your Xbox 360 game.

*Please note that as of 10/01/2010, all systems related to Xbox 360 in XNA Game Studio 4.0 are β versions.

Operating environment

Prerequisites

Operating environment

substance

Distributing in Packages

The first thing to keep in mind when distributing Xbox 360  games in package format is that only people who have purchased an XNA Creators Club membership can run the games you distribute. Keep in mind that not everyone with an Xbox 360 will be able to play games that are distributed in packaged form. In short, I think it's better to think of it as a way for XNA creators to play with each other. (However, we don't know what this form will look like in the future)

Unlike Windows games, what you need to have installed in the environment where the game is distributed is essentially the development environment for Xbox 360 games. What you need to install is briefly described below, but if you prepare the environment as described on the "Prepare your development environment" page, you will be able to play games on Xbox 360.

First of all, the Windows environment.

• Windows XP SP3 or later or Windows Vista SP1 or later, Windows 7
• Visual Studio 2010
• Microsoft XNA Game Studio 4.0

Then the Xbox 360 environment.

• XNA Creators Club Membership
• XNA Game Studio Connect
• Xbox Live Gold membership (as applicable)

Create a file (game package) to be distributed

First, open the Xbox 360 project for the game you want to distribute.

Let's switch "Debug" to "Release" in the toolbar. This way, you can eliminate debugging information that you don't need for your game and optimize your game to build.

Of course, it's also a good idea to test in Release mode beforehand.

Select "Rebuild Solution" from the Build menu to discard the build information so far and build from scratch.

I don't think there is a problem with a normal build, but in rare cases, there may be files that are not built in their previous state, so it is recommended to rebuild just before distribution.

Once the project has been rebuilt, select "Package XXXXX as XNA Creators Club Game" from the Build menu. (XXXXX is the project name)

Then, you can see that a file called "XXXXX.ccgame" has been created in the following folder.

• [Project Folder Name] [project folder name]\bin\Xbox 360\Release

This is the game package for XNA, and you can distribute it as-is. (However, depending on the site, you may need to compress it separately into a ".zip" file, so please check it yourself.)

Run a distributed Xbox 360 game

First, make sure that the computer to which you want to distribute the game is connected to the Xbox 360, and then start XNA Game Studio Connect on the Xbox 360, and then put it in a standby state.

Next, I got the ". If you double-click the "ccgame" file, a dialog like the one shown on the right will appear, so click the "Unpack" button.

The games in the package are then automatically deployed to your Xbox 360.

On the Xbox 360 side, if you return to the previous screen from the standby screen, you'll see that the game you just placed has been added to the list. Choose this.

You can start the game like this.

After you deploy a game, you can disconnect the Xbox 360 from the computer and still let the Xbox 360 run the game on its own. However, you must be connected to the Internet.