Microsoft XNA is composed of industry-leading software, services, resources and communities focused on enabling game developers, and those who want to become one, to be successful on Microsoft gaming platforms.

Microsoft XNA Game Studio is a new game development solution for developing games in an easy and efficient way. XNA Game Studio works with all versions of Visual Studio® 2008 or Visual C# 2008 Express. It lets developers create games for Windows, Xbox360 and the Zune Player with minimal expenditure.

As a Premium member of the XNA Creator`s Club, you can sell your Games at the Xbox LIVE-Marketplace. Additionally, you get access to a huge amount of tutorials, samples, starter kits and forums. For students this membership is available for free* over MSDN Academic Alliance: (link to 1.1.3. MSDN AA page).

More information, subscription and free download of Microsoft XNA and Visual C# 2008: http://creators.xna.com

For beginners, we recommend a book called Microsoft XNA Game Studio 2.0: Learn Programming Now!: http://www.microsoft.com/mspress/books/11849.aspx.

Microsoft® Popfly™ is fun and easy way to build and share mash-ups, games, gadgets and Web pages. Popfly is made up of online visual tools, so no download is required. Popfly is a social network for hosting, sharing, rating and remixing creations from other Popfly users.

Popfly allows you to choose from a variety of built-in templates or start from scratch to create a game. You can export the game to Facebook or use it, for example, as a Windows Live Gadget.

You can mix different blocks such as web services and visualization tools to create your own mash-ups in a very easy and simple way. If you want go deeper, you can modify the blocks in JavaScript. Microsoft supports you with a huge amount of prebuilt blocks.

You can create a web page by choosing predefined styles, themes and color schemes. Put the blocks together in the way you want and make your own personalized web page without spending hours of working.

You can host, share, comment and remix creations with the other Popfly users in the Popfly Space, the social network of all Popfly users. And best of all, you can get started without writing a line of code, all you need is to install Microsoft® Silverlight™ and to sign in on the Popfly Homepage.

For more Information or demos please visit: www.popfly.com.

*Special use terms

AntMe! is a small game with the goal to program the A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) of virtual ants. AntMe! is a good introduction to the C# or Visual Basic .NET programming languages. Additionally, it gives an insight in the interesting world of A.I. programming.

Every AntMe! player controls an antfolk, which searches food in a virtual forest. The food is limited and there are plenty of enemies in the forest, which the player has to fight against or runaround.

Shall the ant attack the enemy or run away? Shall it call other ants which are close? What if there are not enough friends nearby? To get started, you have to program the decision-making of your ants, so that they react as good as possible. Every time you improve the code, you can follow how your ants get better and react more adequately in difficult situations. Finally, if you think your ants are good enough, you can try to compete with your antfolk against other programmers worldwide!

For more information, tutorials or downloads please visit: http://antme.net.