   Curious about XBox 360 and "XNA"
  I dont own a XBox or a 360 and I know little about this "XNA" aside from the hype of "Bedroom coding with an XBox".  Oh and somewhere in there is the mention of C#(never used it before).I have some experience of Visual C++.NET 2003, DirectX 7&9, and Windows GDI. Getting hold of an Xbox360 is no problem as they are currently going cheap at £140. I currently own a Windows Vista laptop with the premium home edition.It sounds like a return to the days of the 8bit and 16bit home computers by programming on dedicated hardware, but what is the real deal here?  Whats the catch?  If its worth doing then what do I need to do to get up and running? What hassle should I expect to face?   
  Catch? hmm:1) must use C#2) must use XNA  <-- neither of these are negatives really, just an aspect.3) need xbox live Gold subscription <-- apparently not! my bad!4) need creators club membership    <-- you'll have to pay for both of these to actually run stuff you've made on the xbox360 BUT you can run them on the PC for free.5) you apparently lose some floating point (maths) performance6) xbox360 MUST have a harddrive. <-- can't be the cheapo "Arcade" version.None of these, as I say, are really negatives except for your wallet and that's only if you feel you absolutely must deploy it to the xbox360 itself. Mostly I'd just do the development on the PC using XNA and C#. Then when you've got something fun, fork out or ask for a creators club membership for your birthday ;) (it doesn't matter if your 14 or 40 that still works btw!!!) and begin porting it to the Xbox360 at that point.It is a cool idea and you have full access to the shaders, memory etc almost like a normal developer so it could be a good experience.Andy[Edited by - NineYearCycle on September 29, 2008 3:27:26 AM];  You don't need XBox live Gold.  I don't have it and I've run XNA tutorial apps on my XBox.  You do need a creators club membership, but Microsoft tends to hand those out for free at different times if you pay attention (such as during its Dream.Build.Play competition.  All you have (had) to do was sign up).   ;Quote:Original post by NumsgilYou don't need XBox live Gold.  I don't have it and I've run XNA tutorial apps on my XBox.  You do need a creators club membership, but Microsoft tends to hand those out for free at different times if you pay attention (such as during its Dream.Build.Play competition.  All you have (had) to do was sign up).Numsgil is right all you need is the creators club membership, which you can get at various free Microsoft promotions.  It's actually a Premium Membership of $99 a year, or $49 for four months.  At times with special promotions you can get these for free.Also, what is neat about XNA is with the XNA 3.0 right now in CTP edition you can make games for the Zune family, which is really neat, and it's fully compatibly with Visual Studio 2008.What I would do if I was you is just simply become a member in their community, read a couple of tutorials, and write some code during your free time.   ;  Thanks for replying, guys.I can get the Premium package for £165 from play.com - would the 60GB drive be alright?Also looking around there is a free download of Visual Studio C# 2008 Express Edition from the MS website.  Can this be used or will I have to fork out for a commerical edition?   ;  The express edition will work.   ;  Actually it was designed with the express edition in mind.  They only added support for the professional edition recently.   ;  Then that just leaves the question of whether the Premium 60GB 360 is suitable.  I might consider picking one up this week...   ;  I use one of the old 20GB hard drives just fine. 60GB is more than plenty.   ;  The hard drive needs to be big enough to hold your game + whatever fluff the OS puts there.  So pretty much any hard drive at all will be plenty.   