This is absolutely HUGE news.

Microsoft just announced that with XNA Game Studio Express (free) and Creators Club ($99/year), anyone can write games for the XBox 360 and share them with other members of the Creators Club. Later, other XBox 360 users will have access to the content, too! BAM! As someone who writes unfinished games about once a year to share with friends, I’m really excited! Even more, I’m excited to see games from established independent software developers popping up on the 360!

Let’s hope the other console manufacturers follow! I’d LOVE to see freely available independent games for the Wii!

Update: Ouch!  The procedure for game sharing is much more involved than just asking your audience to pay the fee.  From the FAQ:

Q: How exactly can I share my 360 game to other 360 users? Will my game only be available to people with the XNA “Creators Club” subscription? Will it be available to all 360 users that have an Xbox Live account?

A: There is currently no supported way to share binaries on the Xbox 360. Currently, there are four requirements that must be met in order to share a game targeting Xbox 360 which is developed with XNA Game Studio Express.

1. The individual you are planning to share the game with must be logged in to Xbox Live and have an active subscription to the XNA Creators Club

2. The receiving user must have downloaded the XNA Framework runtime environment for the Xbox 360

3. The receiving user must have XNA Game Studio Express installed on their own development PC

4. The game project, including all source and content assets, must be shared with the receiving user. The receiving user then compiles and deploys the game to their Xbox 360.

The podcast and press release are up!

Highlights of the podcast:

• Channel 9 success numbers.
• Scoble is leaving because Microsoft is on the right track again.
• He’s also leaving because he wants to take advantage of the media possibilities that Microsoft, Apple and other companies are setting up. (Vista, iPod, XBox 360, etc)
• Prediction: Next year, 50% of Vloggercon attendees will have HD cameras.
• Second Life integration with feeds, audio and video is tight.  You can carry around a waving flag with a video playing on it.
• When a story breaks on blogs, podcasts, etc, it spreads like wildfire.  PodTech can tie into that.  Existing large media companies are too slow.

First, I’ll say that I’m not treating tonight’s news about Robert joining PodTech as fact until I hear it from him.

That being said, I can see why Microsoft wouldn’t fight to keep him around if he decided to leave.

• Through his blog and his videos at Channel9, Robert has given Microsoft a single friendly face to bloggers and other technology workers/enthusiasts.
• Also, through a lot of internal changes, Robert and others have set up a large infrastructure at Microsoft of PR. Including bloggers and videobloggers with Channel9 and On10.net.
• It seems to me that the best thing Microsoft could do to emphasize the other bloggers, vloggers and podcasters would be to let Robert go off and revolutionize something else.
• The bloggers at Microsoft are currently very enthusiastic. Why not take advantage of that enthusiasm and have Robert step down while the infrastructure is in place to take up the slack. If he steps down when the bloggers and vloggers at Microsoft are less organized, it could be disastrous for Microsoft PR.

My first instinct was that this ‘news’ HAD to be false because a company with Microsoft’s resources could easily prevent Robert from leaving. But, after some consideration, I can see why they might even encourage him to try something new while their other employees are still jazzed about blogging/vlogging.

Meanwhile, why would Robert leave Microsoft and join PodTech? With a big personality with a lot of practical experience running a podcasting/vlogging network, I think it could really have a chance against the existing media companies.

So: Good luck Robert!

Update: Dave and Chris both confirm. And, now, TechCrunch confirms.

Update 2: Robert’s explanation is up.  This was a good move not just for him and PodTech but also Microsoft. It’s time for some of the other kick ass bloggers at Microsoft to take the spotlight.