During its keynote address today at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Microsoft announced that it will soon allow Xbox Live members to play, rate and share community-created games authored using XNA. This will happen thanks to a new open distribution service for community-developed titles, which Microsoft predicts will allow Xbox 360 gamers to have access to more than 1,000 games by the end of the year.

“The time has come for the games industry to open its doors to all game creators, enabling anyone to share their creations with the world,” said John Schappert, corporate vice president of LIVE, Software and Services for the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft. “Our goal is to drive a creative and social revolution in games with the same transformative power that we’ve seen in digital music and video sharing.”

To help demonstrate the power of XNA, Microsoft announced that the following seven games will be available on the Xbox Live Marketplace immediately.  Unfortunately we were unable to connect to the service to confirm this, suggesting yet more woes for the oft-criticized service:

•“JellyCar.” Created by Walaber from the United States, this game is about driving a squishy car through squishy worlds, trying to reach the exit.

•“Little Gamers.” This is a 2-D high definition action side-scroller based on the famous Web comic “Little Gamers” created by Loïc Dansart, a 24-year-old software developer from Belgium.

•“The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai.” An intense 2-D action platform game created by James Silva from the United States, “The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai” has a unique, highly stylized look and fast and fluid action.

•“TriLinea.” This puzzle game created by Edison S. Prata Jr., Renato Pelizzari da Silva and Davi da Silva Prata from Brazil mixes fast-paced action with strategy.

•“RocketBall.” Created by Tyler Wanlass, Patrick Murty and Todd Barrons of the United States, this neighborhood game of dodgeball explodes onto the street with fast-paced multiplayer action.

•“ProximityHD.” This game, created by Brian Cable from the United States, takes the essence of strategy games — battles for control of territory and armies — and distills it down to a simple, easy-to-understand set of rules for casual players.

•“Culture.” Created by independent game development company Hidden Path Entertainment from the United States, “Culture” contains challenging games and puzzles based on beautiful flowers.

Each XNA community game created using XNA Game Studio with an XNA Creators Club membership can be submitted for distribution on Xbox Live, with each title then undergoing a peer-review process. Beta testing of this process will begin this spring, with full distribution enabled by the end of the year.