XNA Game Studio 3.0 beta is coming soon

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As noted in this post on the XNA team blog earlier today, the beta version of XNA Game Studio 3.0 is coming next week.  The blog post contains a list of key new and changed features between the XNA Game Studio 3.0 CTP that was released back in May and the upcoming beta.  Here is a summary of the features:

Zune-specific features

  • Support for the upcoming Zune 3.0 firmware - note that the XNA Game Studio 3.0 CTP will not be compatible with the 3.0 firmware.  My colleague Michael Klucher posted a summary of this issue on his blog, including steps to remove 3.0 CTP games from your Zune since they will no longer work with the 3.0 firmware
  • Zune deployment from 64-bit OS's
  • Remote Performance Monitor will now work for Zune

Xbox 360-specific features

  • Xbox 360 project templates are available - however, you cannot deploy games to the Xbox 360 with the beta
  • Big button pad support

XNA Framework and Visual Studio features

  • Media enumeration and playback on Windows and Xbox 360 (parity with the Zune APIs that were available in the CTP)
  • Simple sound effects on Windows and Xbox 360
  • Rich presence, invites and join session in progress
  • Content compression
  • FBX importer improvements
  • Support for C# 3.0 features in Xbox 360 and Zune games (this was already available for Windows in the CTP)
  • Screenshots of games while they are running on a Zune
  • ClickOnce deployment for Windows games
  • Project upgrade wizard to automatically upgrade XNA Game Studio 2.0 games
  • Multiple content projects
  • Cross-platform project synchronization

I'm looking forward to getting feedback on the XNA Game Studio 3.0 beta once it is available next week.  I'm planning to post some more detailed information about some of the above features that I worked directly on for this beta, so stay tuned.

As always, bugs and feature suggestions for XNA Game Studio and the XNA Framework can be reported via the Microsoft Connect site.  Our team takes these bug reports very seriously, so I definitely encourage you to report issues there.