Microsoft® XNA Game Studio® is a toolset composed of industry-leading software, services, resources and communities focused on enabling game developers to be successful on Microsoft gaming platforms (Windows-based PCs, the Zune digital media player, and the Xbox 360 console with an active premium XNA Creators Club subscription).

Based on Visual Studio 2005 Team System, XNA Studio provides a structure for collaboration between content creators, programmers, management, and testers. XNA Games Studio is included in the software packages available to educational institutions that have an MSDN Academic Alliance (MSDN AA) subscription, and can be downloaded from the ‘Subscriber Downloads’ area of the MSDN Downloads site.

The Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) has created an XNA Games Studio-based laboratory facility for use in their “Game Design and Development (GD&D) program,” a new area of study within the B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences.

RIT faculty Andrew M Phelps, Founding Director & Associate Professor of the GD&D program, Christopher A Egert, Assistant Professor, GD&D program, together with Microsoft Academic Developer Evangelist Gus D. Weber, have detailed their experiences designing their facility and implementing the software in their laboratory in a white paper “Implementation Strategies for Microsoft XNA Game Development in Academic Laboratory Environments.” To download their paper, go here.

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