Xbox Academy: Microsoft’s Latest Xbox Free Game Design & Development Courses

Xbox Academy is the latest Microsoft project to be launched in Sydney Australia by the tech company. The project covers a series of free game development classes in partnership with the Academy of Interactive Entertainment. Will this game design and development program, teamed up with AIE, be a good start to perfectly hone future game programmers? Will Microsoft be able to sow the seeds of future game developers?

According to Game Spot, the three different main courses to be featured in the program are game design, game programming and developing games on the Xbox One. Each student is provided with Surface Tablet for the three-hour course which will cover various aspects of the game development process.

The game design course emphasizes on the game development in its conceptual stage. The game programming course focuses on giving the participants an introduction to the cross-platform game engine called "Unity" and exploring its graphical interface by way of populating a 3D world. Third, the developing games on Xbox One course will cover learning cross-platform game programming skills and deal with techniques specific to coding on Microsoft's Universal Windows Platform.

Since the AIE focuses on the nitty gritty of game development and visual effects, this program also aims in letting students have a glimpse of possible future career paths should they opt to be in this industry after graduation, as reported by Game Zone. All the lesson learned from the three courses are applicable to other formats, even if these courses specifically focus on Xbox. Same courses taught by AIE in the actual college, the workshop costs are covered by Microsoft store.

The tech giant is expecting up to 120 students during the Australia's Easter school holiday period. According to the official site of Microsoft Event, the Xbox Academy workshops' recent series will start from April 10 to up April 22, 2017.