XNYay or XNGay?

So Microsoft recently announced that they were going to make their game development for windows and xbox 360 available to the great unwashed. Now in theory this sounds like a great idea and its got lots of people really excited about making games in their spare time.

The thing is there are already plenty of frameworks out there for people that want to make games. Now admittedly these platforms don't have the resources or marketing reach of a company like Microsoft so that people can find out about these things, nor do they have integration with a full blown console platform (although the $99 price tag may scare people off a bit) and IDE. But by and large people who make games are fairly resourceful people and will be able to find these other solutions and get them to work.

I have a feeling that the initial buzz will be great and Microsoft will get lots of large download figures which to band about but at the end of the day, people will realise that programming games is hard and there will be a fairly steep drop off. Still, if one great game is made because of this initiative then hey, hats off to them! I for one will be downloading this and giving it a go.