XNA Game Studio 2.0 Released

Michael Klucher
Program Manager – XNA Community Game Platform

On behalf of the XNA team, I am pleased to announce the availability of XNA Game Studio 2.0 beginning early morning Dec 13th, 2007 PST.

To get your own copy of XNA Game Studio 2.0, head over to XNA Creators Club Online at: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=101280&clcid=0x409. There, you’ll find information on downloading both the Windows tools needed to develop games as well as information on downloading XNA Game Studio Connect so that you can deploy games to your Xbox 360 console.

Since we first released XNA Game Studio Express a little over a year ago, we’ve made a lot of improvements, including many features you asked for. Two of the most important new features are support for multiplayer networking over Xbox 360 and Games for Windows using LIVE and support for all versions of Visual Studio 2005.

Please make sure you check out any known issues in our readme at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=97935&clcid=0x409. If you have trouble with your installation of XNA Game Studio 2.0, visit the XNA Creators Club Online forums, where people (including many members of our team) will be around to help you.

Once you get running don't forget to check out the Dream-Build-Play 2008 Warmup Challenge with several great prizes.

We've also got you covered with new samples and starter kit's updated for XNA Game Studio 2.0. Over the next few days and weeks, we'll refresh and enhance our developer education lineup.

Finally, as always we’d like to thank you for helping support XNA Game Studio by trying out our betas, using the product, and giving feedback. You are instrumental in driving our product and making the vision of user-created games a success. When I consider the amazing number of great games this community has produced in the past year, I can’t wait to see the games you create with XNA Game Studio 2.0!