GDC 2005: New Xbox Hints from Microsoft's Keynote Speaker J Allard

The Game Developer's Conference (GDC) is often not much more than its name implies: a gathering for the people who design and create the video games we enjoy. GDC has been a great source of news on future software and hardware that will help developers create the next generation of great games. So it's not surprising that many people at GDC were expecting to hear some big news out of Microsoft concerning its next-generation console. With sales that exceeded those of Sony's PS2 this year, and recent news of achieving over 1.4 million Live subscribers, Microsoft has established itself as a real leader to many gamers - and they are hoping to do the same in the development community as well.

At last years' GDC , Microsoft announced XNA in an effort to reach out to and accommodate developers. Calling it a "game development platform", XNA is primarily a collection of software tools designed to speed up development and reduce costs by focusing on streamlining both content creation and the production process.

But this year, while XNA was still heavily promoted, developers were just as eager as gamers to hear about what they would be developing for, not just more about the tools they would be developing with.