Det har i det siste kommet frem litt mer om "crossplatform"-funksjonaliteten som Microsoft snakket om på E3, dette er gode nyheter for gamere da det vil i større grad tilrettelegge bruk av utstyr på flere plattformer. Noe som vil spare oss en del penger.
Det har også kommet litt mer info om XNA og for å unngå misforståelser og oversettelsesfeil vil jeg gjengi kildene på originalspråket til tider.
Matt Lee fra Microsoft game studios sa i ett intervju med Arstechnica litt om "crossplatform" og XNA. Om "crossplatform"-delen ble det sagt ett par ting som er verdt å bite seg merke til, deriblant at mye av utstyret til Xbox 360 og PC vil dekkes av dette fenomenet.
We're also going to make sure all of the controllers moving forward are cross platform, such as the racing wheel and wireless controllers. The APIs for input and audio are almost identical now as well, which helps cross platform titles.
Dette vil enkelt og greit si at PC og Xbox 360 vil gå om hverandre når det kommer til utstyr
Om XNA sa han følgende:
There are several products that make up the XNA initiative. The first is the XNA Framework, which uses a new form of Managed DirectX to allow developers to write games using managed code in languages like C# or VB.NET. The second is XNA Build, which is an asset manager that allows developers to see and control every part of the build process. The third and final piece is XNA Studio, which is a version of Visual Studio that has been customized for game development.
XNA Studio is going to be a really interesting product, and I think it will become a critical component of game development, just as Visual Studio has become the primary environment for game development. The XNA Build community technology preview released at GDC shows a glimpse of what's possible when powerful build tools are applied to content production. Programmers take things like compilers and linkers for granted. These tools scan header files and file timestamps, and automatically determine dependencies and perform incremental builds. Content builds are similar to code builds—many files with dependencies need to be processed into a final build, but content builds have traditionally not enjoyed the same features and benefits as code builds. Content builds at a game studio are typically composed of a mixture of off-the-shelf tools (Maya, third-party middleware) and custom in-house tools, all tied together with project-specific scripts. These scripts are typically hard to maintain and debug, are very project-oriented (so they aren't reused for multiple projects), and when something breaks, one or a handful of people become the bottleneck to getting it fixed. XNA Build takes the MSBuild build engine and replaces those scripts in content builds—providing cool features like debugging, incremental builds, distributed builds, logging and more. I think studios will readily adopt this tech, since it will save them money and make the day-to-day development process run much smoother. We're making sure this technology is ready for prime time by testing the system with Microsoft Game Studios titles such as MechCommander2 and a few more recent titles.
The XNA Framework (managed code on Xbox 360) was announced at GDC. It was a priority from the start to get the CLR and Managed DirectX running on Xbox 360, both as a platform for development and as a scripting component. Not much more info is available than that, but stay tuned, as the XNA team will be revealing more details later this year.
Med andre ord, vi har masse spennende ting I vente og siste ord i denne saken er definitivt ikke sagt.