Managed DirectX 2.0, Xna and Me...

One of the Program Managers for the Xna Framework recently started his first blog.  Unless you have the main RSS feed of this site subscribed, you probably didn't notice his first post, which talks about a lot.

You may have also seen the 'official' press release announcing the Xna Framework.

If you haven't read Al's post yet, I suggest you go do that first.  It's ok, i'll wait for you to get done..

(Yup, i'm still waiting)

(You haven't forgotten about me have you?)

Great, you're back!  Anyway, there's so much stuff I want to talk about and say, but I'm probably going to start rambling and forget mentioning things..  C'est la vie.. 

So anyways, like I mentioned last week, I've moved over to the XBox team and the Xna team specifically.  If you're @ GDC this week, you might have the chance to see some of the demos we have written entirely in managed code running on both Windows as well as the XBox 360.  People have been asking me for what seems like forever if there would be managed support for the Xbox, and I guess we've finally answered that.

Of course, i've also had people tell me numerous times over the last 3 to 4 years that it is essentially impossible to write a game in managed code.  I have no idea why people think that, but obviously we disagree, and our demo's are starting to show that (even considering the early nature of the work we've done).

So what about MDX2 though?  As I'm sure you're now aware (since you *did* go read Al's post), what is now called Managed DirectX 2 will be folded into the Xna Framework.  The assembly itself will still ship (in non-release 'beta' form) until we are ready to ship a pre-release version of the Xna Framework, but in it's current form, it will never be officially "released."

We're working feverishly to get a preview of the Xna Framework out as soon as possible, and I'm quite excited about the work we're doing, and the excitement people will have when they see it.  It's also quite refreshing to have an entire team supporting in these efforts.

I look forward to talking more about some of the exciting things we're doing in the (hopefully not too distant) future.