January 2008 - Posts
You may not believe it but GDC 2007 is right around the corner. I'll be heading out to San Francisco the entire week of February 18th to attend some great sessions and chat a little about XNA Game Studio. We have some cool sessions that we're working on for GDC this year. As we get a schedule together I'll be sure to post on the XNA Team Blog letting everyone know exactly what those sessions are. I'm hoping that the information should be available in the next week or two.
Hopefully you're heading out to GDC too. Not only is it a great chance to get to learn some cool stuff (Especially about XNA Game Studio!) it's a great time to reconnect with old co-workers from previous endeavors and meet new people. I enjoy trying to sit down with groups of people I don't know at GDC and just listen to what people are talking about and are excited about. It's a great time to connect with people from "the industry" especially if you are just starting out. If you are attending hopefully I'll run into you to say hi.
If you can't make it this year, let me know what information you'd like to hear because I will be more than happy to post photos and information on my blog as the show goes on. All you need to do is let me know!
In XNA Game Studio 2.0 I think we ended up making some good changes to device management. I consider "device management" to be everything from adding your Xbox 360 on your computer to XNA Game Studio Connect on the console. Hopefully you've noticed some of them but here were some of the new features.
XNA Game Studio Device Center
- Created an entirely new program just for managing devices outside of Visual Studio.
- Created an easy to follow wizard for adding your Xbox 360, this included easier instructions to follow as well as a better entry field for the Connection Key.
- Added a toolbar in Visual Studio which allows you to dynamically select an Xbox 360 to target or add a new device without leaving Visual Studio.
XNA Game Studio Connect
- Simplified the experience, there's only one screen in which to act on. You can display, or reset connection keys all from the same screen.
- Allow you to connect to XNA Game Studio connect with multiple computers (You could only use one computer previously without destroying the other keys).
- Games are stored in the Games Library just like your other games. You can see this post for more information.
Most of this was based on feedback we had gotten from users, and experiences we knew we wanted to improve from 1.0/1.0 Refresh but didn't really have the time. The overwhelming feedback that we had seen was that the connection key process was confusing. Especially so when you had to go to a settings menu to enter it, then go to another screen to actually test it. We also got feedback that people had more than one PC that they wanted to use with the XNA Game Launcher such as a desktop and a laptop, which lead us to adding the feature to allow multiple PC's to use XNA Game Studio Connect.
While there were other huge features like networking and Visual Studio support we really tried to improve the experience for those of you developing games on the Xbox 360. Many of the new things you might have already picked up just using the product, I wanted to go over this because next up I'll post about what the future holds for XNA Game Studio Device Management and what you'd like to see next, so be thinking about it!
Wow, another year winds down, including my second year at Microsoft. I've got to admit that New Year's is one of my favorite holidays. Out with the old and a chance to start fresh as the new year rings in, sure I know it's just an arbitrary date in time, but isn't everything :-)
I have a lot of things I am looking forward to or resolutions for 2008. Things that I want to tackle in 2008 include:
- Blog More! - My first year blogging was pretty good but slowed down way to much over the last year. Even the #XNA IRC channel agrees that I need to post more. Who knows I might try and be really hip and pick up this Twitter thing too! If you have ideas for stuff that you'd like to read about please let me know!
- Get Organized! - This is one of those resolutions that always is the same. Try and get organized and stay organized whether it's work or fun. I'm always looking for a way to keep on top of what I need to get done and what's already been done.
- Play Games! - This includes continuing my current addiction that I have with Rock Band. I'm really looking forward to some of the games coming in 2008. Saints Row 2 especially, I really enjoyed the first one and hope the second one lets me import my character to continue the adventure. I'm sure all the 2008 games aren't announced yet so who knows what's gonna come up. If 2008 turns out to be the year of Starcraft 2 you can bet I'll be in line for that as well.
While those are the things I can think of off the top of my head, I'm sure theirs about 10,000 different things that I want to do in 2008.
I think 2008 is going to be a stellar year for XNA Game Studio. XNA Game Studio 2.0 was just another milestone in the long adventure we have planned. There are always more surprises to be had!
Here's wishing all of you of you a very Happy New Year and I hope your as excited about the next year as I am.
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