Kodu was revealed by Microsoft fat-man Steve Ballmer during the company's keynote speech at the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show last night, with MS hoping it'll become the next big thing in home game development.

Massively simpler than the company's professional development tool XNA, Kodu is being described as a "playground" for people to create extremely simple little games to play and swap. A bit like a certain high-profile recent PlayStation3 game, to be honest. Here's what Microsoft's Matt MacLaurin, the game's lead Kodu designer, had to say about it...

"We've done everything possible to make sure that creating a Kodu playground is not only easy, but that it is also fun and engaging for people of all ages and backgrounds. Since Kodu's interface is intuitive and prevents common programming mistakes, we're making it easy for everyone to enjoy the magic of game creation."

Magic! That's what gaming needs. We're definitely in favour of a return to games containing magic. Kodu will launch later this year via the Xbox Live Community Games channel.

(Via Develop)

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