XNA Game Studio Express Beta 2 Available for Download

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Michael Klucher
Program Manager – XNA Game Studio

I hope this past week following our announcement went by fairly quickly for you. The XNA Game Studio team is pleased to announce that you can now download XNA Game Studio Express Beta 2 from the XNA Developer Center.

If you’ve been using the first beta, please make sure to completely remove it before installing beta 2. There will be plenty of information in the documentation to get you started, as well as the readme on our website. The main thing to keep in mind is that you need to migrate your beta 1 projects over to beta 2 manually. This involves creating a new project and importing your code files. Again, if you’re unsure how to do this, see the migration guide in the Getting Started documentation.

Also, to answer some of the questions raised by our previous post, take a look at what’s included with beta 2:

  • XNA Framework Content Pipeline functionality!
  • Xbox 360 API
  • Many bug fixes and feature enhancements based on your feedback, including updated  documentation.

As mentioned above, beta 2 provides the Xbox 360 API to program against, but you will not be able to run on the Xbox 360 until the Creators Club becomes available on Marketplace this holiday. While you won’t yet be able to run on the Xbox 360, we wanted to give you a chance to get a feel for the differences between the Windows API and Xbox 360 API, and to give feedback on the new APIs. You’ll also have something to try out the day the XNA Creators Club makes it possible to run your game on the Xbox 360.

Another question users had was whether beta 2 will support Windows Vista. At this time we still do not offer support for Windows Vista. More information about Windows Vista support will become available as we progress toward our final release.

Finally just a small refresher on the feedback mechanisms we have in place if you have questions or want to file an issue with the team. The same forums will be used for the new beta; for questions on the XNA Framework Content Pipeline, you’ll want to use the  XNA Game Studio Express forum, and for things like components or the Xbox 360 API, you’ll want to use the XNA Framework forum. For filling bugs or feature requests, we’ll still be using the Microsoft Connect site. Our feedback page now includes the ability to select a version, to identity what beta you’re using. If you’re unfamiliar with Microsoft Connect, please see this post as a primer to get you started.

We’ll be following up with more posts in the coming weeks talking in-depth about the changes from beta 1 to beta 2.

Thanks.