News.blog: Microsoft to offer cheap Xbox 360 dev kit?

Since last spring, when the Xbox 360 was first announced, one of the biggest concerns was that it would be too expensive for most videogame developers to create games for the next-generation console.

In the end, it's hard to judge whether those concerns were valid, since the Xbox launched with a fairly solid lineup of games. However, almost all of those games were published by the big dogs of the industry: Electronic Arts, Activision, Sega and the like. Few garage-type development shops were in the mix.

But at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose on Tuesday, the rumour is that Microsoft plans on announcing a developer's kit that would make it possible for anyone to build games for the console, or for PCs, and that the kit will only cost about $100 (£60).

It's hard to know exactly what such a development kit would mean for the larger body of Xbox games, but one thing seems clear: there would be many more games on the horizon, something that would no doubt annoy Sony as it ramps up for the worldwide launch of the PlayStation 3, supposedly in November, presumably without such a cheap developer's kit available.

Another result could be that plenty of small teams might start building low-cost online games in a bid to make it onto the Xbox Live roster of games, or to take on the more traditional massively multiplayer online games from the likes of Blizzard Entertainment, Sony Online Entertainment and NCSoft.

Microsoft did not respond to multiple requests for comment.