Exciting new announcements!

Well I have to admit, I've been anxiously awaiting the opportunity where I could finally get out and let the public know some of these things, and now the reigns have been taken off and I've never felt better about the opportunity to write a blog post.

First and foremost, myself.  After almost 8 long years I've decided to leave Microsoft because I've gotten an offer that is simply too good to pass up.  Starting Monday I begin my new career being the guy on the other end of the phone when that Verizon Wireless employee is asking "Can you hear me now?" continously.  Can you imagine the endless joy that can be obtained by sitting on the phone saying "Yes." all day?  Sure, I have to take a little pay cut, and lose my benefits, and move into a cardboard box downtown, but if you ask me, it's a small price to pay for doing something you love.

Now, I know you're probably worried about what my leaving will do to either Managed DirectX and/or the XNA Framework.  Unfortunately with this announcement they've taken my secret decoder ring, so I'm no longer able to translate the secret messages I get.  However, based on my last few meetings before they stole my ring, this is the most likely direction they are going.

The XNA Framework will still be cross-platform, but Windows and Xbox 360 have been removed from the list.  That's just "too hard"..  Every abacus platform has been added though.  This should allow us to get the results we're hoping for.

We've decided that the choice of languages was entirely too large.  From now on, all managed games will be written in COBOL.

Due to these two changes, that should lower the development time of the framework, and it looks like it will be finished well before our current June 2017 release date (of course, if we run into problems with those two changes it still might slip).

As you can see, there's a lot of great stuff going on.  I for one haven't been this excited since..  Well, this time last year!!!!!!