msmobiles.com/f

[msmobiles.com_robot]

XNA Express edition will enable game development for Xbox 360 and Windows XP, but not for Windows Mobile as expected...

Read more at http://www.msmobiles.com/news.php/5473.html

[thelondonthing]

It's more likely that Microsoft recognises that the current Windows Mobile 5 environment is not a particularly good gaming platform. It's true that games of all sorts can be played, but the combination of existing hardware for mobile phones and the Windows Mobile OS isn't exactly PSP beating. The fact that the Windows Mobile platform is still segregated into smartphone and Pocket PC camps doesn't help for unified product development.

I would think it extremely probable that Microsoft would roll out XNA support in Windows Mobile with Windows Mobile 6, which they have already stated will finally unify the smartphone and Pocket PC strands into a single divergent operating system. Once you have a single platform, it becomes much easier to develop unified games for the whole platform, rather than having to develop games for two seperate strands of the operating system.

Microsoft will also have recommended specifications for hardware running Windows Mobile 6 (just as they do for WM5) which will likely reflect an XNA-supportive environment.

So I wouldn't panic too much about XNA not immediately supporting the Windows Mobile platform - I suspect it's more to do with the current Windows Mobile environment being far from ideal for incorporating XNA at this time, but I would fully expect to see it being supported in the future.

[EJR]

thanks for your remarks, thelondonthing, furthermore it is yet not clear what is with Zune - if Zune will be powered by Windows Mobile, or at least by Windows CE, then it may be that XNA will be released simultaneously for Zune and Windows Mobile!