As promised, XNA Game Studio 3.0 RTM’ed today

XNA Creators Club - XNA Game Studio 3.0 is Here!

“XNA Game Studio 3.0 expands on all the offerings of earlier iterations to include additional functionality to appeal to game developers of every level and enable them to create games to distribute through Xbox LIVE Community Games on the Xbox 360 as part of the New Xbox Experience.

Our ultimate goal with XNA Game Studio 3.0 is to continue to provide easy-to-use, approachable tools for hobbyists, academics and indie game developers capable of producing the best games to be shared with the world on Xbox 360, Windows PC and Zune.

• Try Before You Buy: We’ve added a new Trial Mode to XNA Game Studio 3.0 that will enable creators to easily add the required trial feature to their games. This will enable all customers to try the games before they buy them with little effort on the part of the creator.
• Invite Friends: Now developers can easily take advantage of even more Xbox LIVE multi-player features like in-game invites. With this feature, developers can enable in-game invites allowing players to invite their friends to play their favorite multi-player community games.
• Visual Studio Integration: XNA Game Studio 3.0 supports C# 3.0, LINQ and most versions of Visual Studio 2008, giving developers more options than ever before.
• Even More New Features: With XNA Game Studio 3.0 game developers will be able to develop truly cross-platform games that work on Windows, Xbox 360 and Zune with minimal effort and the new upgrade wizard helps creators easily port their games from 2.0 to 3.0 to make them compatible with Xbox LIVE Community Games. We’ve also added 1-click installation of Windows games, and automatic asset compression of content to improve download times. All together, XNA Game Studio 3.0 improves on experiences for both developers and gamers.  

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Microsoft Downloads - Microsoft XNA Game Studio 3.0

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File Name:	XNAGS30_setup.exe
Version:	3.0
Date Published:	10/30/2008
Language:	English
Download Size:	62.5 MB

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Microsoft Downloads - Microsoft XNA Framework Redistributable 3.0

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File Name:	xnafx30_redist.msi
Version:	3.0
Date Published:	10/30/2008
Language:	English
Download Size:	7.6 MB

The XNA Framework Redistributable provides the necessary runtime components to execute a game on Windows that was developed using Microsoft XNA Game Studio 3.0. This release contains improved functionality along with new features. Installation of this runtime is not necessary on systems that already have Microsoft XNA Game Studio 3.0 installed.

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XNA Game Studio 3.0 Readme

“This file provides setup information and describes known issues for XNA Game Studio 3.0.

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Why, with all that has been released this week, am I blogging about this? Because it’s cool? Because it lets us leverage our .Net development experience to build Windows, Zune and XBox360 applications/games? Because I’m looking for the news needle in the PDC haystack?

Yep, all of the above.

Yet there’s also another reason. I feel that XNA is a stealth technology that I see making its way deeper into our day to day development lives. Much like how the Microsoft Robotics Studio’s CCR/DDS has evolved way beyond its original niche, I think we’ll see that same thing from XNA. As a matter of fact, we’re already see that. Guess what one of the API’s you use when developing for the Microsoft Surface? Yep, XNA…

 

Related Past Post XRef:
XNA Game Studio 3.0 RTM/RTW October 30th, 2008
XNA Game Studio 3.0 CTP Available (Get your Zune Gaming on! :)