Announcing the Xbox Live Creators Program

Today at GDC we announced the launch of Xbox Live Creators Program, starting with an Insider Preview that gives any developer the opportunity to publish Xbox Live-enabled games on Windows 10 PCs along with Xbox One consoles.

The Creators Program provides game developers access to Xbox Live sign-in, presence and select social features that can all be integrated with their UWP games, and then they can publish their game to Xbox One and Windows 10. This means your title can be seen by every Xbox One owner across the Xbox One family of devices, including Project Scorpio this holiday, as well as hundreds of millions of Windows 10 PCs.

What do you get with the Xbox Live Creators Program?

First, we are opening publishing to the Xbox One console. With the Xbox Live Creators Program, you can ship your UWP game on Xbox One, Windows 10 PC, or simultaneously on both platforms. And because Xbox One offers players a curated store experience, games from the Creators Program will appear in a new, distinct Creators game section in the Store.

Second, we’re making it easy to integrate with Xbox Live using the Xbox Live Creators SDK. Take advantage of the following capabilities:

Xbox Live sign-in and profile, including gamertag.
Xbox Live presence, recently played and activity feed.
Xbox Live social, including friends, Game Hubs, clubs, party chat, gameDVR and Beam broadcast.
Xbox Live leaderboards and feature stats.
Title Storage and Connected Storage.

Any developer who wants to take advantage of more Xbox Live capabilities and development and marketing support for their game should apply and enroll into the ID@Xbox program.

What tools can I develop with?

The Creators Program enables you to easily integrate Xbox Live into your existing UWP projects. Supported game engines include Construct 2, MonoGame, Unity and Xenko, and they all create beautiful games. Others may also work. And, you can develop games for the console without a Dev Kit.

How do I get started?

Join the Developer Preview at https://developer.microsoft.com/games/xbox/xboxlive/creator. This will give you access to Creator’s Program configuration pages is Dev Center.
Download and start using the Xbox Live Creators SDK.

While the Xbox Live Creators Program is in limited release to insiders, you can integrate and configure services using the SDK and the Dev Center. However, you will not be able to publish to the Store. We’ll be enabling publishing in the near future, so stay tuned!

To learn more, browse sample code and ask questions, check out the following documentation and communities:

We’d love to hear your feedback! Use the Xbox Live Creator’s Program UserVoice site to voice your suggestions.

Source: Announcing the Xbox Live Creators Program