What is happening with XNA?

Hello, I want to ask if anyone knows what is happening with XNA. Is it discontinued? Can you still use it with Windows8 for game development (not talking about metro here).

If it is dead what are the alternatives that are as easy as XNA?

1 hour ago, Steve123 wrote

Is it discontinued?

 

No

Can you still use it with Windows8 for game development (not talking about metro here).

Yes.

1 hour ago, evildictait​or wrote

*snip*

No

Of course it is. What's your reasoning for saying it isn't?

24 minutes ago, wastingtime​withforums wrote

*snip*

Of course it is. What's your reasoning for saying it isn't?

Because it isn't. XNA isn't supported for Windows Store apps, but continues to be supported for Desktop mode.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/astebner/archive/2012/09/29/10354437.aspx

3 minutes ago, evildictait​or wrote

*snip*

Because it isn't. XNA isn't supported for Windows Store apps, but continues to be supported for Desktop mode.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/astebner/archive/2012/09/29/10354437.aspx

So like Silverlight then. Quote from your link: There is not a version of XNA Game Studio that works with Visual Studio 2012.  You can install Visual Studio 2010 side-by-side with VS 2012 though. - Encouraging!

MS employees promote SharpDX and Monogame:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/wingameswithdirectx/thread/46687bc7-a18a-4c5a-a555-79b8537c0ad8

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bobfamiliar/archive/2012/08/01/windows-8-xna-and-monogame-part-1-overview.aspx

Sure signs that XNA is alive and kicking.. of course it's "supported" (a.k.a. keep-alive), but as I said, so is Silverlight (well, SL is actually "more equal" than XNA - you can still do SL with VS 2012).

Do you think there will be a XNA 5?

16 minutes ago, wastingtime​withforums wrote

*snip*

Do you think there will be a XNA 5?

Yes, it's not because one technology has become redundant that Microsoft kills all other products too.

4 hours ago, wastingtime​withforums wrote

MS employees promote SharpDX and Monogame:

By that logic they also promote the iPad, iPhone, Android, PHP, MySql, Apache and Linux.

Look, XNA is dead when (and only when) there is a press release from Redmond stating that is the case. Until then, what tech websites, randomers on the Internet and you, in your own twisted mind believe to be true is simply baloney.

Microsoft has not announced that XNA is discontinued, ergo XNA is not dead. End of.

@evildictaitor: Humm... it's just like saying VB6 isn't dead because Win8 still support it, and you can still run VB6 on a Win8 machine...

IMO if a technology is no longer supported in the latest IDE release, there's no difference than declaring it as depreciated.

EDIT: I just checked... XNA studio components are installed as part of Windows Phone SDK 8.0. Since that SDK works with VS2012... Is that we really cannot develop XNA applications with VS2012? Can someone check that? I can't check because I haven't download the WPSDK yet.

2 hours ago, cheong wrote

@evildictaitor: Humm... it's just like saying VB6 isn't dead because Win8 still support it, and you can still run VB6 on a Win8 machine...

IMO if a technology is no longer supported in the latest IDE release, there's no difference than declaring it as depreciated.

EDIT: I just checked... XNA studio components are installed as part of Windows Phone SDK 8.0. Since that SDK works with VS2012... Is that we really cannot develop XNA applications with VS2012? Can someone check that? I can't check because I haven't download the WPSDK yet.

part of the problem with XNA has always been that they have to re-do the add in code they use to make it work for each version of VS and they get that done a while after the release of the new VS version.

that aside I found that xna was never all that great, some of that having to do with the messed up games for windows and network stuff.... and the lag in updates that work with the current versions of stuff.

6 hours ago, cheong wrote

IMO if a technology is no longer supported in the latest IDE release, there's no difference than declaring it as depreciated.

XNA has always been seperate to Visual Studio - and they've never been properly integrated. The whole notion that "XNA isn't included in VS2012 therefore XNA is dead" is completely bogus.

@evildictaitor:The problem is just that the latest version of XNA Studio only install on top of VS2010, not on VS2012.

See the "Instruction" part of the download pages, they all list installing VS2010 as the first step, which means it's positioned as VS2010 addon.

1 hour ago, cheong wrote

@evildictaitor:The problem is just that the latest version of XNA Studio only install on top of VS2010, not on VS2012.

See the "Instruction" part of the download pages, they all list installing VS2010 as the first step, which means it's positioned as VS2010 addon.

For the first couple of years of XNA it didn't install in Visual Studio at all, full stop.

The fact that it no longer works inside Visual Studio isn't an indication that XNA is dead; it's just an indication that it's not a priority for either the XNA team or the Visual Studio team to have it working in VS2012.

The XNA team are busy with XBox/WinPho integration and the VS2012 team are busy with Metro apps. There is only so much resource available for these problems, and frankly the XNA team and the VS2012 team have quite a lot on their plate at the moment.

If you want to write XNA apps for the desktop for Win8, that is still supported. If you want to write XNA apps for metro, there are alternative routes available, e.g. via the MonoGame framework (why should Microsoft duplicate the effort of the open-source community when they have better stuff to get on with?). If you want to write XNA games for WinPho or Xbox, you can continue to do so, but need to do so from inside VS2010.

There is still a last hope for XNA, maybe it could be reimagined and resurface as part of 'XBox Runtime' components of Durango, just like Silverlight became Windows Runtime XAML.

13 hours ago, evildictait​or wrote

Microsoft has not announced that XNA is discontinued, ergo XNA is not dead. End of.

Microsoft has barely ever announced that they would discontinue a technology. They usually let it die progressively by not making any more updates, not providing support, no more activity from MSFT employees on dedicated forums...etc.

So XNA is not dead of course, as It can still be used for Windows desktop, WP7 and XBOX360 platforms, which is already pretty nice, but it is definitely a technology of the past for Microsoft. For the open source community, as you mentioned, there is another story with MonoGame, though at some point, they will have to introduce some new features that were not accessible from XNA (Geometry shaders, tessellation, compute shaders...etc.), and they will have to add new APIs that won't be anymore a XNA thing, It will be a MonoGame thing.

If you think that there is a XNA team working underground, well, there isn't. Not a single job career on Microsoft jobs on the past year has been published about such an underground project (this kind of thing are usually easily spotable).

If you search for a XNA developer from the XNA team responding to technical question at the "Xbox LIVE Indie Games Forums" you won't find any of them for the past 12 months.

But now, if you ask for DirectX and C++ for Windows 8 Metro or Windows Phone 8, you will find several people from Microsoft working on it and helping on official Microsoft forums.

It has been pretty clear from last year Build Conference, that the current focus for Microsoft is going back to native C++ and raw DirectX. XNA is absolutely no more developed at MSFT.

The strategy seems so unclear here.  Is the expectation that all casual games should be written in HTML/WinJS for Windows 8 Store Apps? 

I would be happy to see MonoGame to be more officially supported by MS.  MonoGame needs investment - like removing the dependency on Game Studio and better support for Windows Desktop based apps.  How about Microsoft open-sourcing XNA and so that Xamarin can pick it up?  Remember, XNA still doesn't support TouchPanel properly on Windows 7/8 desktop apps.  It really looks like development has stopped.

Microsoft did extensive telemetry collection and found that most Windows users at home don't develop games, so naturally, game development has gone the way of DOS and CP/M, so there's no need to support such efforts. No one plays computer games -- clearly a corner case.

10 hours ago, joeyw wrote

The strategy seems so unclear here.  Is the expectation that all casual games should be written in HTML/WinJS for Windows 8 Store Apps?

Or C++ and DirectX.

12 hours ago, ZippyV wrote

*snip*

Or C++ and DirectX.

Hear, hear! And its so much simpler too!