New Visual Studio 2010 Offers Announced

With the advent of the second Beta Build of its next-generation development platform, Microsoft also announced product line SKU simplifications. Essentially, Microsoft introduced a range of changes in the Visual Studio product lineup for version 2010 compared with its predecessor, focusing on new pricing options and extra benefits for MSDN subscribers. The start of March 2010 brought with it new options for existing Visual Studio customers, in order to streamline upgrades from VS2007 to VS2010.

The successor of Visual Studio 2010 will be offered in no less than four flavors: Visual Studio Express, Visual Studio 2010 Premium with MSDN, Visual Studio 2010 Professional with MSDN and Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN. Devs currently leveraging the Standard Edition of older VS releases indicated that they felt left out, and made Microsoft come up with a new offering especially designed for them.

“I’m announcing our Standard Offer promotion to ensure current Standard Edition customers can easily and affordably move up to Visual Studio 2010. The Standard Offer enables customers who purchased Visual Studio 2005 or 2008 Standard Edition to upgrade to Visual Studio 2010 at the previous Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition $299 retail price. Standard customers can take advantage of this offer April 12-October 12, 2010,” S. Somasegar, senior vice president, Developer Division, revealed.

Visual Studio 2010 is currently in Release Candidate stage, along with .NET Framework 4. Although initially planned for availability by the end of this month, VS 2010 and .NET 4 will only be offered to devs come April 12, 2010. In addition to the new offering designed to help VS Standard Edition customers upgrade, Microsoft announced a new offer for developers that will buy copies of Visual Studio Professional though the retail channel.

“To help these developers fully realize the power and benefits of a MSDN subscription, I am announcing MSDN Essentials, a one-year trial MSDN subscription that will be included with every retail copy of Visual Studio Professional sold,” Somasegar promised. “MSDN Essentials subscribers will have access to three of the latest Microsoft platforms: Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise, and SQL Server 2008 Datacenter R2 for development and test use, as well as 20 hours of Windows Azure. Subscribers will also have access to MSDN’s Online Concierge, Priority Support in MSDN Forums, and will be included in special offers from partners.”

Visual Studio 2010 Premium Release Candidate (RC) is available for download here.
Visual Studio 2010 Professional Release Candidate (RC) is available for download here.
Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Release Candidate (RC) is available for download here.

.NET Framework 4 Release Candidate (RC) is available for download here.