March 2006 Microsoft® XNA™ Studio delivers next-generation tools and technology to simplify the game development process and ease developer pains. XNA Studio tools (currently available as pre-release versions) are designed to help developers at all levels create better games faster across multiple game platforms, while letting them contain production costs. The Best Tools and Technology Developers will have access to powerful tools from both Windows® and Xbox 360™ development environments to unlock next-generation hardware and gaming needs. XNA Build, XNA Asset Relationship Management (ARM), along with the XNA Framework, are the foundation for future XNA products in XNA Studio, aimed at enabling game creators to do more with their games by spending less time building or integrating tools and focus more on creating great games experiences. XNA Studio works in conjunction with Microsoft Visual Studio® 2005 and Team Foundation Server, allowing developers and development teams to build high-performance, security-enhanced and reliable solutions using an enterprise-ready development platform. XNA Studio Designed to Ease Game Production Challenges | • | XNA Build will provide game developers with robust, flexible tools for combining all their content into a release-ready product. From pre-production to release-for-certification, XNA Build provides mechanisms for orchestrating, debugging and optimizing the game build pipeline. These tools enable game developers to spend less time building and maintaining their internal tools infrastructure and more time on creating great game experiences. | | • | XNA ARM provides a foundation to help a studio easily identify game asset relationships and dependency information to unlock a wealth of benefits, ranging from incremental content builds to assistance in identifying orphaned or unused content. | | • | Asset management puts content at the core of the game development process by providing a unified source control and asset management system for managing all game assets — from code to content — in a single, integrated version-control solution. | | • | Work items provide robust versions of key production tools such as project management, defect tracking and work tasks to optimize game production from end to end. |
XNA Framework Simplifies Windows and Xbox 360 Game Development XNA Framework brings a rapid application development solution to games by simplifying the complex and costly cross-platform game development available in today’s tools and technology. Developers will have access to familiar sets of application programming interfaces (APIs) incorporated into the XNA Framework class libraries and productive C# programming language across Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 to easily create games on multiple platforms. Creating Better Games, More Effectively XNA Studio significantly improves end-to-end game production by offering an integrated game development environment for the entire studio. XNA Studio brings robust, reliable tools to improve and optimize the content creation pipeline, resulting in tighter integration and workflow between code and content. Developers will also be able to seamlessly interoperate with other Microsoft products, existing internal tools and popular third-party tools such as Autodesk 3ds Max and Autodesk Maya, and Adobe Photoshop through an open extensibility model. Cross-Platform Development XNA provides the best resources for developing games — from casual to hard-core — across all Microsoft gaming platforms, whether for two guys in a garage or the largest of game studios. By using the new tools in XNA Studio such as XNA Build and XNA ARM, as well as the XNA Framework, developers will be able to lower development and deployment complexity when creating Windows and Xbox 360 games. Microsoft, XNA, Windows, Xbox 360 and Visual Studio are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
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