I like making games with Kodu, I have also made a game with XNA game studio. Kodu is easier Some of the Kodu games I have tried are far better than a lot of the games currently on the community games channel. I hope the Kodu team expands on this project a lot.

First, the 150MB limit applies to the packed .ccgame file that is uploaded by the developer. This file then gets “processed” by the framework in some manner (unpacked/repacked/framework files added, whatever), so the actual game size on the service is usually larger than the submitted .ccgame’s size. So any developer who submits a .ccgame which is close the the 150MB limit will probably end up with a game on the service that seems to be larger than this limit.
Second, it’s not very well known, but the 167MB size that the Xbox dashboard displays actually isn’t the download size at all, but it is the size that the data will take up on your storage device *after* download, i.e. also after unpacking. So it might be that the download is actually smaller, but after installation the game then takes up 167MB on your device. It’s this number that is displayed by the dashboard (MS seems to think that consumers don’t care about how much data actually goes over the wire, but rather how much space the game will take up on their device).

So you simply can’t make any assumptions about the original size (in regards to the 150MB limit) from viewing the game size that is displayed by the dashboard.

It’s nice that the player is able to experiment and make Kodu the experience they want it to be. For example, while playing with one of the built in shooter games, I decided I didn’t like how damage was working and within ten seconds, I’d changed it to how I wanted it to be.

But I’d have to disagree with the ‘no special treatment’ bit I’m afraid – it appears to be a 167MB download. :O

Fog, I’ve designed just the system you want. It’s a monitor with a boxing glove in it. What happens is when someone makes a shit design decision, it comes out and punches them in the face. Harsh, but it might just work! I tested it on the guy who wrote Rick Dangerous. He’s dead now

For visibility, I hope it doesn’t drown but in fact helps to garner more interest for the Indie Games section. Who knows!

Right now it doesn’t matter how great a game idea you have, if you can’t code to some extent then it’s almost impossible for those ideas to become reality. If Kodu helps address that imbalance in any small way then that can only be a good thing. (I wish there was an equivalent tool to help all the great coders I’ve seen over the years who haven’t got a clue about game design, but that’s a different topic.)

TBH the example games I played in Kodu were poor, however, as LBP has shown, users imaginations will soon be doing things the developers never dreamed of. It’s just a shame there’s no easy way to distribute anything you produce and that IMO is Kodu’s biggest failing and another problem with XBIG.