Reflection
With a title like that I’m bound to start discussing the intricacies of one of the CLR features am I not? Well given the day, I have to say of course not. I’m going to take this time to remind myself of the things that have happened over the last year.
Have you heard? We shipped the Xna Game Studio Express! Honestly, I thought I had written a short post stating that, but apparently I’m losing my memory in my old age, because it certainly doesn’t appear to be here! For that, I apologize, but it wasn’t a secret that it was coming out, so hopefully this isn’t a surprise to anyone!
As I insinuated in a post a few months ago, this release has been quite ‘special’ for me.
This time a year ago I was still in the DirectX team. Such a thing as “Xna Game Studio Express” didn’t exist, and the amount of people even aware such a thing was being considered was very small. This team has gone from essentially nothing to having a product out that will changes the rules in this industry. This was all done in the space of a single year’s time (really in just a few short months). This is an absolutely remarkable achievement, and I hope every single person who helped make this possible feels the same sense of pride that I do. The hard work shown by this team and how we pulled everything together to allow all of our anxious customers to start using Xna was a sight to behold.
When I see things such as Xna Racer and various other games being created in the community that prove all the people who were telling me how impossible it would be to create such things using managed code, it makes all the long hours I’ve put in over these years to help make this happen worth it.
It’s not often in life you get to be a part of something that not only can change the industry you work in, but can spawn an entirely new one as well. What this team has accomplished in such a short time speaks volumes about the passion and dedication they have and bodes well for the future of this product.
We’ve accomplished all my original goals for managed code in gaming. We’ve released a product with plenty of support. We’ve opened up the Xbox 360 for development using managed code. We even have a contest going for you to enter to win great prizes. I’ve been trying to set up a contest for a very long time.
Knowing some of the features we have planned, and seeing what the community already has done in such a short time, I couldn’t be more proud of where we’ve ended up. The excitement is just beginning. The rest is up to you!
Comments
Anonymous
January 01, 2007
Congratulations and Happy New Year Tom!! Your hard work (as well as others) has meant lots of funfilled hours for me! Thank you for all that you have done for us Managed Programming guys!Anonymous
January 05, 2007
Now that XNA is out the door and Managed DirectX is more or less a discontinued product what are you telling people that need a managed 3D API for software that is not gaming related? We started to develop a CAD-like software package for house automation and used Managed DirectX. Now it looks like MDX will not see any updates in future (DirectX 10 ?). We wouldn't want count on an API that is bound to die (or to become outdated). But XNA Framework on the other hand doesn't seem to be the right API for the job either since it seems to be too much tailored for gaming. What is Microsoft's message here? Managed 3D graphics is only reasonable in casual gaming area?Anonymous
January 07, 2007
I would like to know if it is possible to write Games using the xna framework with any .net language. I can read some C# code but for some reason VB .net is my favourite. Will you do it?Anonymous
January 22, 2007
Not to be negative, but why in earth is there no System.Net support in Xbox 360?Anonymous
February 18, 2007
I want to learn directx with c# professional