In continuing with highlighting some of the new features in the XNA Game Studio 3.0 Beta, I wanted to highlight one of my personal favorites. The ability to take screen captures from the Xbox 360 and Zune when running an XNA Framework game. Many of you have requested this functionality, with Shawn even adding an excellent blog post on the best way to accomplish this in code. Thankfully, we’ve made it much easier!

Screen captures can be taken using the XNA Game Studio Device Center. It’s important to understand that screen captures can only be made by starting the game from your computer using Visual Studio. You cannot play a game stand alone (i.e. Running from the Games menu on Zune or the Games Library on the Xbox 360. You have the option of either:

• Starting the game with debugging (usually “F5” in Visual Studio)
• Starting the game without debugging, and hence better performance (usually Ctrl+F5 in Visual Studio)

Once you’ve done that you simply navigate to the XNA Game Studio Device Center, right-click on the device currently running the game and select “Take Screen Capture”. Once that’s done a PNG will be placed in your Pictures folder, and opened up automatically so you can take a look.

Hopefully this will make it much easier to get screens for your Xbox LIVE Community Game submissions, as well as debugging issues and giving you the ability to show off your great game to friends and family!