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Announcing the XNA Game Studio Express Update

  • Article

Michael Klucher
Program Manager – XNA Community Game Platform Team

In April of this year you’ll be able to download an update to XNA Game Studio Express, this release mainly focuses fixing your requests and issues that you’ve filed through the Microsoft Connect site(yes, we really do read and respond to your bugs and feedback as best we can). So what are some of the improvements in this release? Let’s take a look through each feature area.

  • XNA Game Studio Express
    • Windows Vista is now fully supported
    • You can now add icons to XNA Game Studio Express Games.
    • Incrementally deployment of Xbox 360 projects now works for all your projects (not just the last one loaded)
  • XNA Framework
    • Added Bitmap based font support
    • Added XACT 3D Audio support
    • Improvements and additions to the Math framework API’s
    • BasicEffect now supports per-pixel lighting
    • Many more changes based on your feedback!
  • XNA Framework Content Pipeline
    • Added support for Volume Textures (Texture3D)
    • Content builds can now be canceled
    • Support for “clean” builds
    • Added the ability to read vertex and index buffer information from Model types
    • Many more changes based on your feedback!
  • XNA Game Launcher (Xbox 360)
    • Game thumbnails are now displayed for your games
    • Improved connection-key connectivity experience between the Xbox 360 and the PC
    • The ability to test and diagnose the connection between the Xbox 360 and the PC

I hope that some of the changes called out above are something that you’re looking forward too. Funny, there seems to be something I’m missing from the list... oh yeah...

  • Developer sharing of packaged XNA Game Studio Express Games
    • Users can now package their binary games into a single file to share with other users of XNA Game Studio Express.
    • These files can be emailed or hosted on websites like any other files.
    • To run a game double click a file and it will unpack to your Windows based PC or Xbox 360 console, it’s that easy!

That was it! :-) Throughout the week of GDC and into next week we’ll be expanding on this list to give you information and “sneak peeks” at some of the new functionality to this update of XNA Game Studio Express. We hope that this starts to build in the direction that you want to see and is considered by us to be a small step towards our goals future visions.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 08, 2007
    It's sounds so cool. I hope the update will be available as soon as possible (o: Very good work!

  • Anonymous
    March 08, 2007
    För dig som är intresserad av XNA och spelprogrammering och som har följt några av mina inlägg samt debatten

  • Anonymous
    March 08, 2007
    Volume textures and game sharing, I can't wait!

  • Anonymous
    March 08, 2007
    Does it support Visual Studio 2005 (not the Express version)?  If not, I'm not interested.  If I'm going to build games in my spare time, I want to use all of the tools that I have to make development easier such as Resharper, unit tests, etc..

  • Anonymous
    March 08, 2007
    It's good to see that you are continuing to update and improve XNA.  I think that all of the items listed above will be a great addition to an already great package.  Keep up the good work, I look forward to trying out the update.

  • Anonymous
    March 08, 2007
    so you guys weren't sitting around playing WoW this whole time?  nice :-)

  • Anonymous
    March 08, 2007
    Is it too much to hope that GUI support has been added to the framework?

  • Anonymous
    March 08, 2007
    Next month we'll be releasing an update with a small sampling of some of things we've been working on.

  • Anonymous
    March 08, 2007
    The next release of the XNA Framework won't add anything dramatically new to the content pipeline, but

  • Anonymous
    March 08, 2007
    XBOX LIVE SUPPORT PLEASE!!!!!!

  • Anonymous
    March 08, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    March 08, 2007
    I am very very happy with the progress so far.  Especially binary distribution to the 360, the vanity plates (game splash/title in the XNA launcher) all good things. Can not wait to see whats to come after this.

  • Anonymous
    March 08, 2007
    Wow - never let it be said that we stand still. The XNA team have lifted the lid on the first wave of

  • Anonymous
    March 09, 2007
    Thanks for getting it into Vista! SBC

  • Anonymous
    March 09, 2007
    ContentManager.ReadAsset is a new function coming in the next version of the XNA Framework . What is

  • Anonymous
    March 13, 2007
    I've put my personal book writing on hold as I deal with the day to day operations of XNA.COM (and

  • Anonymous
    March 14, 2007
    "Announcing?" maybe "Pre-Announcing". Sheesh. It's not availible? Why 'Announce' it?   G

  • Anonymous
    March 14, 2007
    What about hardware query? Anyway, XNA is outstanding!!!

  • Anonymous
    March 19, 2007
    I too am waiting for full Visual Studio support.  I don't understand what the hold-up is.  Feels like you don't want professional developers to play with XNA.

  • Anonymous
    March 19, 2007
    An imminent update to the XNA Framework will allow for sharing of packaged XNA Game Studio Express Games.

  • Anonymous
    March 20, 2007
    Robert Burke's Weblog contains a nice series of XNA related blogs: Adventures in XNA 1: Mind Balance

  • Anonymous
    March 30, 2007
    I mentioned a while ago about XNA updates being mentioned on the XNA Team Blog.

  • Anonymous
    March 30, 2007
    We seriously need to get Occlusion Queries in this update.

  • Anonymous
    March 30, 2007
    We seriously need to get Occlusion Queries in this update.

  • Anonymous
    April 02, 2007
    Announcing the XNA Game Studio Express UpdateBug fixes on the way! XNA Game Studio Express Windows...

  • Anonymous
    April 02, 2007
    Very eeeaaagerly awaiting the Window Vista support .. what it the expected date of the update? Thanks, Rao.

  • Anonymous
    April 10, 2007
    20 days remaining! Make sure it will work on Vista + VCS Express without any unimportant installation errors. :: Wuzz ::

  • Anonymous
    April 10, 2007
    20 days remaining! Make sure it will work on Vista + VCS Express without any unimportant installation errors. :: Wuzz ::

  • Anonymous
    April 10, 2007
    I didn't get a lot of responses to my previous XNA Game Studio Express blog entry (perhaps because I

  • Anonymous
    April 19, 2007
    One of the new features in the next release of the XNA Framework is the addition of per-pixel lighting

  • Anonymous
    April 23, 2007
    Michael Klucher Program Manager – XNA Community Game Platform Team XNA Game Studio Express 1.0 Refresh

  • Anonymous
    April 23, 2007
    Still no support for non-Express Visual Studio?

  • Anonymous
    April 24, 2007
    As detailed here , we've released an update to XNA Game Studio Express today. You can get an idea of

  • Anonymous
    April 24, 2007
    An updated version of the XNA Game Studio Express was released today. this version adds support for Windows

  • Anonymous
    April 24, 2007
    An updated version of the XNA Game Studio Express was released today. this version adds support for Windows

  • Anonymous
    April 25, 2007
    XNA Team Blog : XNA Game Studio Express 1.0 Refresh Released XNA Game Studio Express (다운로드) XNA Game

  • Anonymous
    April 27, 2007
    In this article, The ZMan walks through the steps required to add some more sound effects and text output

  • Anonymous
    May 04, 2007
    GamesDev Channel - Redacción 24/03/2007 Sin duda XNA ha marcado una nueva era en la industria de los