Valve's Source on 360 Explored 23
Yesterday, Valve announced that Source will be available as middleware on the 360. Joystiq went back and asked them a few questions about what exactly that means to gamers. From the article: "The version included with our games (A.K.A. the MOD tools) includes a ton of tools and code for the creation of new products. However, there is a fair amount of code reserved for the 'Pro' version. It is certainly possible for end users or professional game designers (who are moonlighting) to create something with the tools included with purchase of our games, and then defer any decisions about licensing and sales until they've got something working. This was exactly the case with Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, The Ship, and others."
Re:erm.. (Score:5, Informative)
The 'code' portion of a Source mod is just an Windows x86 DLL, compiled from a load of C++. There's no sandboxing or anything, so a mod can happily corrupt the game's memory, call operating system functions, you name it. Disadvantages, yes - but the advantages are extremely high performance and versatility as to what the mods can do.
The original Half-Life operated in a similar way, and later mods for that did all sorts of things which would have been impossible in a sandbox. Like, alternative rendering engines, doing everything through OpenGL - or improved networking, sound or whatever.
In the case of the Xbox 360, I seriously doubt that Microsoft would allow such control over their hardware - they might as well send out free devkits and code-signing signatures to everyone.