Microsoft: User created games will help us leapfrog WiiWare

First unveiled at the Games Developers Conference in February, theCommunity Games initiative will become a channel for professional andamateur developers to deliver experimental titles on Xbox Live Arcade.
"Icertainly think from an innovation perspective it's going to help usleapfrog the competition, effectively until they find a way toduplicate it, assuming they ever do," stated David Edery, Xbox LiveArcade's worldwide portfolio planner.

"To some extent itwill certainly help us have more innovative content than either ofthem, just by definition. With all this random stuff coming from thecommunity, every once in a while there's going to be a real gem inthere that you just couldn't have found otherwise, it wouldn't havefound its way on to a console," he added.
The initiative isexpected to go live before the end of the year, and Edery believes theservice will help identify and create niche audiences that have so farnot been served by a download service on home consoles.
"Theexample I always like to give is will someone finally make that scubadiving game, where there's really only 15,000 people interested in ahardcore scuba diving simulation, but they really, really want one? Andmaybe through XNA someone can profitably get one out there," he said.
"Today,there's not really a venue for that. I'm not going to green light ahardcore scuba diving game for Xbox Live Arcade today because there arenot enough people who are interested in that. But with XNA it'sperfectly possible.
"So I'm much more interested in it from aperspective of can it be used to satisfy more people, with more diversecontent, than anything else," added Edery.
There are also hopesthat the service will be used by established developers and publishersto put experimental ideas and new game mechanics out to an audienceable to get hands-on and offer feedback.
"Who knows, maybe a guy like Will Wright will spin out a game in three weeks, toss it out on XNA and see what happens.
"Thiscould become a wonderful test bed and you'll start to see super-coolstuff coming from guys who wouldn't really have that opportunity to dothat kind of test marketing," offered Edery.