Microsoft Cooking XNA Game Studio 3.1

Microsoft is cooking the next iteration of its XNA Game Studio. The 2009 Game Developers Conference acted as the stage for the Redmond company to announce the upcoming availability of XNA Game Studio 3.1. Still, the software giant failed to reveal any specific launch details, including a deadline, and only indicated that the solution would be provided later this year. According to statistics made available by Microsoft, since its initial release at the end of 2006, the XNA Game Studio was downloaded in excess of 1 million times. Moving onward to version 3.1, the software giant aims to build upon the existing functionality of the Studio.

“XNA Game Studio 3.1 (...) will contain the following features: support for customized Avatars, support for Xbox LIVE Party features, video playback, updated audio APIs for “fire-and-forget” scenarios, support for XACT3, automatic XNB serialization, XNA Framework multi-targeting in the Visual Studio 2008 and/or Visual C# 2008 Express Edition IDE, downloadable content for Xbox LIVE Arcade titles that use XNA Game Studio 3.1, consumer notifications when an Xbox LIVE Community Game that they have purchased has been updated,” revealed Microsoft's Aaron Stebner.

The software giant is promising that among the enhancements that XNA Game Studio will bring to the table there will be improvements from solutions developed by Autodesk and GarageGames. At the same time, XNA Game Studio 3.1 Xbox LIVE Arcade developers will now have a new way of introducing additional content such as add-on to their titles, including episodic updates.

“The goal with XNA Game Studio 3.1 is to continue to provide an easy-to-use, approachable tool set for professionals, hobbyists and independent game developers capable of producing the best possible games to be shared with the world on Xbox 360 video game and entertainment systems, Windows-based PCs and Zune digital media players,” Microsoft revealed.