Microsoft unveils XNA - GAME software development platform for PC, Xbox and (!) Windows Mobile
March 27, 2004 [General] | By anonymous 1.
This is great news for Windows Mobile, because at last Microsoft perceives it as one of its own major platforms:
Games for future iterations of all Microsoft game platforms -- including Windows, Xbox and Windows Mobile -based devices -- will be unleashed by tools and technologies from the XNA development platform.
Due to (yet) tiny market share of Microsoft powered cell phones, developing games for them may be not so profitable as it could be if you could sell your game also for Xbox and Windows PC...
Illustrating the potential of the XNA development platform, Microsoft will make a series of announcements about its own video game tools and technologies in four key areas: online, input, graphics and audio.
- In response to strong customer demand, Xbox Live development tools for functionality such as billing, security, login, friends and matchmaking will be made available to Windows developers. The tools will make it easier to create the same social, unified online gaming experiences on Windows that game players have come to expect on Xbox.
- On the input front, as part of XNA, Microsoft will develop a common controller reference design and unify input APIs and button standards across multiple platforms. The result will be a family of common controllers for Windows and Xbox game players. In addition, the move will fuel a whole new wave of compelling, cross-platform input devices from peripheral manufacturers.
- In graphics and audio, many tools such as PIX (an analysis tool) and XACT (an audio authoring tool) -- previously available only to Xbox developers -- now will be available on Windows as part of the XNA development platform. Likewise, innovations from Windows such as High-Level Shader Language (HLSL) will come to Xbox. The DirectX® API and the Visual Studio® development system will continue to be the baseline environment for both platforms. Collectively, these tools and technologies will enable movie-quality graphics while forming the impetus for new software that will help developers cope with the looming complexity of high-definition video and audio.
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