Ever since the Xbox 360 launch in December various third party community web sites accessing and tweaking the publicly available Gamer Card data have been available. Most of these sites have used screen scrapping to access the Gamer Card information available on the HTML site intended to integrate on your blog. I’ve previously blogged about MyGamerCard.net, which is an excellent community site that lets you create custom gamer card pictures you can use on your blog, as well as provide achievement leader boards.

The Xbox team has obviously taken this community interest in game statistics seriously, and has started something called the “Xbox Community Developer Program”. You can apply to become a member of this program to get access to a private forum on xbox.com, as well as a private XML feed with all the Gamer Card information, as well as a list of previously played games. This is way easier and faster than using screen scrapping to retrieve this information.

I applied by sending some reference projects and information about my self, and got approved to become a member of the program. You can get more information about the program, what you get and how to apply by clicking here. They also have a Xbox Community Developer Program showcase site, where you can check out what other people are using the feed for.