MS announces revamped Xbox 360 coding kit
XNA 2.0 to merge pro, amateur SDKs
Posted in Developer, 14th August 2007 01:29 GMT
Free whitepaper – PowerEdge M610-M710 spec sheet
Microsoft will offer the next major version of its XNA Game Studio pro- and amateur-oriented Xbox 360 game creation tool for download later this year, the software giant has said.
The PC-hosted software development kit, to be re-released as version 2.0, will sport a new user interface that Microsoft said would make transferring and testing games on its console easier than before. Assembling game code and content should be more straightforward too, it added.
Games created in XNA Game Studio 2.0 will be built using the XNA Framework game development API, a new version of which will also be made available alongside the software tool. XNA Framework 2.0's key new feature is the addition of multi-player gaming via Xbox Live, but it also incorporates improvements to make graphics easier to do. It will make it possible to embed games in a Windows Form.
The new kit will now work with all versions of Microsoft's Visual Studio 2005, from the the most basic upwards. Originally released as the amateur-aimed XNA Game Studio Express and the pro-centric XNA Game Studio, the two strands will be merged into XNA Game Studio 2.0 as one tool for all.
Microsoft promised more details when it releases XNA Game Studio 2.0 "late 2007", around a year after the release of XNA Game Studio Express.
Free whitepaper – Total cost of ownership of Dell, HP and IBM blade solutions

Analyst Keynote: The Register Agile Data Center Summit
Enabling The Agile Data Center
Analyst Keynote: The Register Agile Data Center Summit
Sun's surviving staff hit with 'motivation' missive
Ubuntu's Karmic Koala bares fangs at Windows 7
Change your views: OS X tags exploited
Sun preps cell-phone Java plan for netbooks