Microsoft announced the four independent developers that have won the 2009 Dream.Build.Play challenge. For the challenge developers had to make an innovative game for the Xbox 360 using XNA Game Studio. The winners get a share of $75,000 in cash prizes and an opportunity to have their games on Xbox Live Arcade.

Dean Dodrill won the grand prize of $40,000 for “Dust: An Elysian Tail”, a side-scrolling, action rpg where the player controls Dust. The game follows Dust’s journey to rediscover his past.

Panya Inversin won second place and received $20,000 for their 3-D, four player space brawler/shooter, “Max Blastronaut”. Nivel21 Entertainment from Spain won $10,000 for “Rotor’scope – The Secret of the Endless Energy”. Hu Ling and his team from China won fourth place and received $5,000 for a martial arts action game, “HurricanX2 Evolution”.

“Once again, the community of indie developers has blown us away with the quality of games submitted to Dream.Build.Play this year,” XNA General Manager Boyd Multerer said. “Beyond the creative talent unleashed with XNA Game Studio, it’s great to see Xbox LIVE Indie Games coming into its own as the home for independent console games.”

Start studying XNA Game Studio and come up with an idea now so you can enter next year and you might get your game published on XBLA! We need women to win next year!