Always wanted to lend your hand to developing games? Well, you'll probably be interested in the news today that MS have just announced a new tool called XNA Game Studio Express (based on Visual Studio C# Express 2005) aimed at allowing students and hobbyists start developing games for Windows and Xbox360.

You'll be able to download Game Studio Express from MSDN and develop games for Windows for free. If you want to develop games for your (and everyone else's) Xbox 360 will need to join the XNA Creator’s Club. The XNA Creator’s Club will be a new Xbox Live subscription offering that will provide the additional pieces needed to develop non-commercial XNA Framework-based games on an Xbox 360 retail kit. The subscription program will be open to everyone. The subscription is available in 2 options, $99 a year or $49 for 4 months.

A beta of the new offering will be released on August 30, 2006. If you want to know as soon as the Beta is available, go along to http://connect.microsoft.com. Select "Available Connections." Then choose the XNA connection and follow the link to sign up for the XNA Game Studio Express Beta. (Note: A valid Windows Live ID is required, if you do not have one, you will be given the option of creating one. It's a relatively easy process.)

Check out the following link for more details and for more information on the professional version and the XNA framework: http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/xna/gamestudio/