Pay to Play (and even dev)

So the first thing I tried was playing around with Visual Studio's Platform Starter Kit demo. This is a simple little gem collection game with 3 levels. The first thing I did once getting it running was try to deploy it to my XBox.

Plenty of hoops to jump through, and some money, to get this working.

First you have to download the the XNA Game Studio Connect "game" to your XBox. Then you run it, where in lies the catch! In order to run the Game Studio Connect you have to purchase the Premium Membership from Microsoft (Premium is the lowest membership...go figure). Once you shell out $99 to purchase the membership, you can launch the Game Studio Connect. At this point you can sync your computer to the XBox via XNA Game Studio Device Center.

Now, after all then (and $99) you can FINALLY deploy the crappy little example game to your XBox and play it. Yay!!! So worth $99....