XNA Game Studio 3.0 CTP Available (Get your Zune Gaming on! :)

XNA Team Blog - Announcing: XNA Game Studio 3.0 Community Technical Preview (CTP)

"Today, we are delivering the first Community Technical Preview (CTP) of XNA Game Studio 3.0, giving you the ability to build games for the entire family of Zune media devices.  This feature gives you access to the majority of the XNA framework APIs while retaining a seamless sense of integration with the Zune media experience.  In addition, this release now requires either Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition and higher (C# language support must be installed), or Visual C# 2008 Express Edition.

Keeping with Zune media experience, the XNA Game Studio 3.0 integration includes discoverability/access to user’s non-DRM music – allowing you to customize background soundtracks or create real-time visualizations.  In addition, we’ve announced the ability to have multiple nearby Zunes wirelessly engage in an ad-hoc social gaming experience. 

A preview release of XNA Game Studio 3.0 is now available through the XNA Creators Club Online site (http://creators.xna.com), with a final release scheduled for the holiday 2008 season.  For those of you that prefer the shortest path to happiness, the direct link to the XNA Game Studio 3.0 CTP is here.

..."

I know what I'm doing this weekend!  (I didn't want to fix the front sprinklers anyway... ;)

Important note: You can't build XNA games for the 360 with this CTP. You've need to keep Game Studio 2.0 around for now (but they will be addressing that in a future release).

Also here's the 3.0 CTP Readme, http://creators.xna.com/XNA3CTP/readme_xna.htm

(via The Z Buffer - XNA Game Studio 3.0 CTP)

 

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All sorts of XNA Goodness Announced - Community XNA Games via XBox Live and XNA on the Zune!