Microsoft Unveils the XNA Framework

[savage]

Taken from http://blogs.msdn.com/briankel/default.aspx...


You've heard the rumors, now hear it from the source... This morning we announced the Microsoft XNA Framework. The XNA Framework will bring a unified set of game development class libraries to Windows and the Xbox 360. This means that game developers can write games which shares a great deal of source code and even source game assets (sound, models, etc) between the Windows and 360 platforms. Oh, and did I mention it's all managed code? That's right, we are building a custom implementation of the Common Language Runtime for the Xbox 360 as well.
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More details at our Web site - http://www.microsoft.com/xna - including a link to the press release which went live this morning. It's admittedly sparse on details at the moment, but we'll be sharing many more details later this summer at our Gamefest event. This is just the beginning...

[technomage]

Managed Code eh? M$ must be confident that games companies will take this up over the usual native binaries.

[Eric]

There have been rumours of a very low priced XBox360 devkit coming too.

They might be after getting more studios pumping out more games, including games that don't need much computing power (tetris clones, solitaires, 2D games, etc.), for which managed code could be fast enough (just like Java is "fast enough" for the simple games you find in cell phones).

They might also have noticed all those users "wasting" the computing power of their PSPs running old games via emulators, and figured out there could be a market for simple games with the 360 too.