Microsoft Talks XNA Games for Windows Phone 7
This week at GDC, Microsoft showed off XNA games running on Windows Phone 7 and the screenshots are pretty darn impressive.
Microsoft has unveiled its new XNA Game Studio 4.0 for developers who want to work on games for Windows Phone 7 Series, the Xbox 360 and Windows. According to a blog post by Michael Klucher, Lead Program Manger for the XNA Development Platform, XNA 4.0 packs visual studio integration, which means developers can build a single project and with just a few tweaks, have it run on all three platforms.
Klucher's post also revealed that though Microsoft will continue to support game development for the Zune HD via XNA 3.1 and migrating games from the Zune to Windows Phone 7 will be really easy, the Zune won't be included in the XNA 4.0 release. Rumor has it Microsoft will be launching a Zune HD2 later this year that will be compatible but there's no official confirmation on that.
So what does gaming on Windows Phone 7 look like? Impressive, to say the least.
Engadget describes this title, The Harvest, as "a good looking touch-controlled dungeon crawler with destructible environments." It was put together in two or three weeks and mostly from scratch.
Check the screenshots below.




I read that Microsoft was "suggesting" the use of Snapdragons for their chips. I believe currently the Snapdragon is a Cortex-A8 with a dedicated AMD Z430 GPU. So... pretty decent stuff.
really ?, thats actually really good dragon runs at 1Ghz i dont know if ther are variants of the chip though. im still interested in the graphics chip running and resolution supported.
Any phone with those specs is either real big, or has real bad battery life. Or both
Well the GPU in the Snapdragon is based on the GPU in the Xbox360. Obviously nowhere near as powerful but supposedly similar architecture.
F U Microsoft! I have never seen a platform that forces you to use the platform's proprietary engine AND language!! this is just a con to buy you exclusives because people will find it too daunting to rewrite their game in a different language for other platforms.
this is great Microsoft, brilliant. but include a c/c++ path too!!!
I mean it's not even about speed any more, sure it's slightly less efficient but I'd say 'meh' to anyone who said 'c# is too high level and slower than c++' (that's assuming that you implement the runtime properly of course, like you DIDN'T on the xbox to begin with...).
and I know c# is 'open' but still, other platform vendors aren't going to change!
I'm personally, like most owners of the beta program, extremely disappointed in this decision. I was initially happy with the announcement of WP7 and XNA 4.0. Seeing how similar the GUI was to the ZHD, along with the fact that a Zune section would be included in the OS, and all the development they are planning for it, I simply assumed that the Zune HD had a long term future ahead of it. I was almost willing to look past the extreme lack of support the ZHD has received over the past few months. It really was just too good to be true... even if Microsoft continues support of the ZHD, it will be support for an obsolete platform, merely a brief stepping stone to WP7, where there true plans and features wait to be implemented. And to think they had this planned from the start.
All I can say is I really do hope we've all misread these announcements by Microsoft, or they're going to have some serious problems bringing their previous Zune customers back.
I don't think Microsoft was 'suggesting' so much as they were setting a minimum 'standard' for the hardware in their phones. As you can see the requirements are quite high, and are more then capable of competing with other modern smart phones, at least in terms of components. Of course this also means that other SOC's that incorporate faster processors, such as the Cortex A9, are more then welcome.
I have a feeling Microsoft will be a little more strict than that so they can have more driver control this time.
Why do people like you hate C# so much? I have been programming in it for a few years now and so far I love it. As far as porting to another platform, the whole point of MS using .NET and XNA is to make it easy for developers to make a game for PC, Xbox, Zune, and Phone. By programing for the .NET environment, your code should be able to run on any platform that can run the environment.
And yes, I'm sure your going to ask about Linux support. I don't know the details but isnt there a Linux port called Mono or something?
"I have never seen a platform that forces you to use the platform's proprietary engine AND language." There is such a platform. I'll give you a hint, it starts with an "i" and ends with a "Phone"
The Mono implementation under Linux is still half baked and not quite good. And yes, C# is quite a good language for certain things, such as coding games.
The idea of reusing the same game code from console to PC was tried by Microsoft 3 years ago, and was mostly ignored by developers. In fact, only a handful of games ever used it.
Windows Phone 7 Series is simply many years too late to market, and won't be able to compete against the massive app stores of Android and iPhone.