XNA Game Studio Express!

It’s been a little over a year since my team has been working on bringing the .NET development environment to Xbox 360 by developing a custom Common Language Runtime (CLR) for the Xbox 360 console. The CLR is a piece of the recently announced XNA Game Studio Express which will enable developers to write games on their retail Xbox 360. Even better, the XNA platform is supported on Windows as well and will enable developers to easily write a game that can run on both Xbox 360 and Windows! Since XNA Game Studio Express is based on Visual Studio Express and .NET, developers familiar with the writing managed code can easily harness the power of our gaming platforms.

For me, I have always thought it would be cool to be able to write a game. Most of it has been in the logic and physics aspects though and not the art – because frankly I can’t draw. My artistic streak is in the form of photography (shameless plug: My Photo Gallery). To date, I have spent most of my career in the “plumbing” of software development…operating systems, network protocols and the .NET CF CLR. I am very excited to help build a platform that developers can write cool games on and for me to get out of the plumbing and try to create a game.

For more information, take a look at the XNA Team Blog. Also, here is a link to sign up for the public beta of the XNA Game Studio Express(for Windows) at the end of this month or early September.

Scott.

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