Few companies have invested in providing newbie-friendly tools for creating games as Microsoft. XNA Game Studio let newcomers to jump right into PC and Xbox 360 development and resulted in the creation of Community Games, an indie games channel for Xbox 360. XNA still requires programming knowledge, though. What if you wanted to make a game without this seemingly crucial step? You need Kodu.

Kodu's designed to let your everyday gamer -- not programmer -- create whatever game is living in their head. This isn't a years-off tech demo, either; the Kudo blog claims the software is headed into the final stages of production and scheduled for a release before the end of the month. A specific date and pricing (if any), however, has not been set.

If you're not familiar with Kudo, make sure to check out TheFeed's Raymond Padilla's preview from GDC 2009.

What kind of game do you want to make? Kodu sounds absolutely fascinating, but I strongly suspect I'll treat it like LittleBigPlanet -- five minutes of playing around with my own thing, hours spent checking out what the rest of the world makes.

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