Welcome to another installment of Counting Down to Seven, a series of articles about mobile app development that I’m writing as we count down the days to MIX10, when we reveal more about the up-and-coming Windows Phone 7 Series.
The Game Developers Conference is a good time to make game development announcements, and that we did: version 4.0 of XNA Game Studio, Microsoft’s framework and toolset for easier game development. Here’s what it means in a nutshell:
- No matter whether you develop with managed or unmanaged code, it’s what you’ll use for game development on Windows Phone 7.
- You’ll create better mobile games faster, thanks to a powerful and comprehensive set of tools.
- Xbox LIVE comes to mobile, meaning that you can take advantage of the Xbox’s popular gaming social network.
- For those of you already building games with XNA, you’ve got a brand new platform, and it’s one that you take everywhere you go.
You’re going to see all sorts of details about XNA Game Studio 4.0 over the next couple of weeks, and here are some of the best places to get them…
Follow the “Seven Samurai”
By “Seven Samurai”, I’m referring to the Windows Phone 7 Series development team:
Check Out These Sites
- Michael Klucher’s blog entry, Achievement Unlocked: XNA Game Studio 4.0 for Windows Phone
- The Official Microsoft Blog: Game Developers Have a Great Opportunity with Windows Phone 7 Series.
- Keep an eye on XNA Creators Club Online’s “News” page.
- Follow the Windows Phone Developer Blog.
- Don’t forget the MIX10 conference site, which will have a lot of information from the presentations.
- ZDNet has assembled a team to cover the MIX10 conference, where all will be revealed. The people covering it: Ed Bott, Mary Jo Foley, Kip “LiveSide” Kniskern, Benjamin “Neowin” Rubenstein, Paul Thurrott, Long “IStartedSomething” Zheng.
- Mary Jo Foley’s article, Microsoft Adds XNA Game Studio 4.0 to its Windows Phone 7 Arsenal.
- And of course, this blog!
One reply on “Counting Down to Seven: XNA Game Studio 4.0!!!!”
I think you misinterpreted the “unmanaged and managed” bit. What they were referring to is “managed” Xbox developers (ie big developers with agreements in place to dev for Xbox). They will get access to the Xbox Live APIs. “Unmanaged” developers are still going to be using managed code (XNA/C# is only a managed language) but will not have the benefit of being able to use Xbox Live for games.