News · 9 Mar 2010 · MTW Editorial Team
As expected Microsoft as finally announced XNA Game Studio 4.0 at GDC today. This new version new lets developers develop games for Windows Phone 7, Windows PC & Xbox 360 (note the missing Zune HD…) and adds the following features:
– Hardware accelerated 3D API’s on Windows Phone 7 Series
– Visual Studio 2010 integration with our toolset
– Added buffered audio support to the Audio API’s
– And much, much more!
It will also include deep XBOX Live integration to enable seamless gaming on the 3 support platforms (as seen in this video)Another important point noted by Microsoft’s Michael Klucher, is the fact that the Zune HD (and original Zune) won’t be supported in 4.0 so those who still want to develop for it will have to use the currently release 3.1 version. Remember that “every Windows Phone 7 Series phone is now a Zune”..:
When we first announced XNA was a development platform for the Windows Phone 7 Series last week and followed up with some real-time Twitter Q&A (@WP7Dev), we got a lot of questions about Zune/Zune HD and how that will work with XNA Game Studio 4.0. Development for the Zune and Zune HD will continue to exist in XNA Game Studio 3.1, however, in XNA Game Studio 4.0, we’re encouraging you to migrate your games over to the Windows Phone 7 Series platform. We tested this a lot during development and had games like Hexic and Goo Splat up and running in an hour or so, it’s very easy! Finally, we learned some valuable lessons on launching a development platform. One of those lessons is that you need a way to bring your ideas to consumers at launch. All of us at Microsoft have heard that feedback, and I will say that it doesn’t matter what type of game developer you are, you’ll be able to find the perfect audience on Windows Phone 7 series. I know you’ll have a lot of questions about how this will work so I urge you to stay tuned to MIX ’10 where we’ll be streaming sessions live to the world and ready to answer more of your questions.
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