The XNA team has announced that a beta has begun for the "Community Games on Live" program.

The program essentially enables bedroom coders to create and distribute their titles over Xbox Live. All users who sign up to the service as premium members will be able to participate in the creation and submission of community-developed titles for distribution over Xbox Live, and be able to give peer reviews of games, but consumption – or play – is limited to US users only in the first beta. The XNA team says it will be adding support for other regions in the coming months.

Membership costs $49 for four months or $99 for a year.

“Today, we delivered on the promise we made at GDC to democratize game development with the launch of the newly designed XNA Creators Club Online website and the highly anticipated beta of Community Games on Xbox Live,” said XNA community program manager David Weller.