Christmas for game developers has arrived early, some nine months since it became official, thirteen since I dreamed about it.

Last night was the official launch of XNA Game Studio Express and I toyed with the idea of visiting the launch party in Redmond but traffic on Monday evenings in that area blows so I passed.

Yes, now it is possible to join the Creators Club on your Xbox 360 and be able to download and create your own games for the Xbox 360. A Creators Club membership will cost you $49 for four months or $99 for an entire year and can now be purchased in the Live Marketplace (see below). The ability to work with the XNA Game Studio Express in two major beta versions has already existed but the ability to actually transfer the games to be playable on the Xbxo 360 wasn’t until last night.

Finding the Creators Club inside your Xbox 360
STEP 1. Navigate to the Live Marketplace and “Games” section.

STEP 2. Go to “Newly Released Downloads”

STEP 3. Scroll to the very bottom and you’ll see “XNA Creators Club”

STEP 4. If you’ve got the extra scratch go with the $99 option, forget the $49 every four months plan (nearly twice the price annually). FYI, both plans auto renew unless cancelled in advance.

STEP 5. After paying by credit card — no, you don’t purchase with Microsoft Points at this time — you’ll see the wonderful announcement below.

Update 4:40am PST: You’ll also need to download the free XNA Game launcher. Be sure to read the deploying a game section at MSDN for more details including getting your connection key.

The Windows side of things
For those who already have been working with the public XNA Game Studio Express betas, make sure you uninstall the prior beta tests. Might also want to peruse the known issues. Also there is a FAQ page that answers questions like how can you share your created games with others.

What about non-developers who want to play?
As of this writing anyway, you’ll still need to approach this like a developer, even if you aren’t one which means you’ll need:

- Visual C# Express installed and running on your Windows connected computer. Be sure to run it at least once before installing and running XNA Game Studio Express
- XNA Game Studio Express downloaded and installed
- a Creator’s Club membership (see above)
- game source must be compiled in Visual C# Express for Xbox 360 in order to transfer to the Xbox 360.

I suspect this process will be somewhat unwieldy for some (most?) non-developer gamers, but Microsoft is rumored — nothing official announced that I’ve seen yet — to be working on an “easier” way of facillitating non-developer gamers. It would be cool if there was some sort of Creators Club download area that developers could share directly with non-developer gamers. Then again maybe this process will encourage more people to get into game development. If that’s the case for somebody reading, see xnadevelopment.com for tutorials including sample source code.

An Xbox 360 game contest will be starting in January 2007 at Dream Build Play and Nathan notes that winners will get their games on the Live Arcade.

The future
At some point next year, a professional version of XNA Game Studio will be released that will allow developers to develop and explore commercial games on the Xbox 360. If they somehow tie this into Adcenter — and I think Microsoft should — that could someday pave the way for non-developers to promote and share in the revenue of indie games. If that comes to fruition it could land a crippling blow to Sony’s nascent online live initiatives. I’m not aware what, if anything, Sony is doing for homebrew development yet. I’m sure they won’t sit on their hands too long. Not if they have any sense (that part can be debated).

Being a huge gaming fan and game developer I’m all over this. Any other readers in the Creators Club? Planning on signing up soon?

• Deploying XNA Game Studio Express game Spacewar
• Develop for Xbox 360 for only $99 a year, oh yeah
• Xbox Creator Club refresh version released and membership extended by 4 months for early subscribers
• XLA Game Studio Framework beta only works with Visual Studio C# Express
• Visual Studio 2005 Express free for first year
• Visual Basic Express doesn’t compliment existing Visual Studio 2003 users?