Achievement Unlocked: XNA Game Studio 4.0 for Windows Phone
As I was sitting on the plane heading to GDC 2010, I started reminiscing about the explosive growth we’ve seen in developing for the mobile gaming industry over the last few years. It wasn’t long ago when we had to show up early to learn about anything related to game development on portable devices. This year, however, developers are already lined up to learn more, as mobile gaming commands several summits at GDC and is woven in throughout the conference.
At GDC this week we’re giving everyone a first look at the latest and greatest, XNA Game Studio 4.0, which provides a powerful, productive, and portable technology for game development on Windows Phone 7 Series, Xbox 360, and Windows PC.
If you’re not familiar with Windows Phone 7 Series, take a look at some of our videos from Mobile World Congress. It’s something totally new and while I’ve only been working at Microsoft for what seems like a very short 4 1/2 years, I have never been so excited with what we’re helping game developers accomplish on such an incredible, consumer focused platform.
While you’ll find a full feature list on the XNA Creators Club Online site and from Shawn Hargreaves. I wanted to shout out answers to some of the burning questions I would have. Yes, We have hardware accelerated 3D API’s on Windows Phone 7 Series. Yes, We have Visual Studio 2010 integration with our toolset. We’ve even added buffered audio support to the Audio API’s that many of you have asked for.
The other key component of XNA Game Studio 4.0 that we’ve enabled exclusively for Xbox partners is Xbox LIVE and a premium gaming experience on Windows Phone 7 Series. Through the Gamer Services API’s you can pull in a user’s Gamertag and 2D Avatar as part of the game experience, unlock achievements on the platform, and leverage notifications for asynchronous turn based gaming.
This is a little different than things are today on the Xbox 360 console, and I expect there will be a few questions. I’ll be following up with a deeper post on our Xbox LIVE policies, but in essence, we’re making it easy to partner with us and there are lots of great features for all developers beyond Xbox LIVE APIs on Window Phone 7 Series.
But wait a minute? This is XNA Game Studio and it sounds like your one of the technologies for developing on Windows Phone 7 Series, isn’t XNA just for Indies? These are great questions. We love the independent developer, it was our target customer in 2006 when we opened up the Xbox 360 for everyone to start developing on a traditionally closed platform. In XNA Game Studio 3.1 and 4.0 we’ve shifted our focus to include what we call the studio developer, seen in products like XNA Game Studio Extensions for XDK for publishing games on Xbox LIVE Arcade. With Windows Phone 7 Series we’re targeting the developers who work in small teams at large studios as well as the lone programmer working solo on their first mobile game title. We think this benefits all game developers and continues to grow the usage of .NET for games for indies and high end professionals alike!
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.
I’m excited to finally be able to talk to you all about XNA Game Studio 4.0 and Windows Phone 7 Series. If you’re new to XNA Game Studio learn more at http://creators.xna.com and get some details from http://ShawnHargreaves.com who has a great collection of information to get you started.
We have a busy week ahead of us but I want you to be part of the conversation even if you’re not at GDC. Shawn and myself will be bringing you some great sneak peeks at what we have going on at the show. You can follow some of the video posts we’ll have on Vimeo (mklucher), and please make sure to follow the entire Windows Phone 7 Series Dev Team on Twitter: (@ckindel) (@shawnhargreaves) (@ozymandias) (@ai) (@cschormann) (@lokeuei) (@mklucher) for more info as we head out to MIX ‘10!
-Michael
