Hacker News Reader

Bad example, you can get on the XBox360 marketplace for $99 dollars these days.

The iphone was vastly more open than almost any phone before it was. Just android is completely open.

I'm not sure you've heard about Symbian, it's only 47% of the smartphone market [1]. You can develop apps for Symbian and install them on your device very easily. Unless you are doing anything hardcore they can even be self-signed (since Symbian OS 9.1 released in 2005 apps have to be signed to be installed) as long as they don't need any hardcore capabilities.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone

Is Symbian to Nokia what XNA is to the X360?

I don't know, but Symbian does have the largest value share of the platforms at Nokia (S30/S40, Symbian, Maemo).

Give me a break. People writing XNA games are not on a level playing field --- at the platform level --- with people writing retail titles.

This is correct. The XNA framework for indie XBox 360 game development has serious technical limitations that set it apart from the "professional" development kit (which I am not able to obtain the price for, as I am not already an established game production company).

Being forced to write in managed code on top of a library of entirely managed code with an uncontrollable garbage collector is one technical issue off the top of my head.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com