Windows Azure Toolkit for Social Games 1.0 RTM Available

Version 1.0 of the Windows Azure Toolkit for Social Games has been released to manufacturing with the RTM bits now available for download via CodePlex.

I first told you about the Windows Azure Toolkit for Social Games in the second half of July 2011, at which point the resource had yet to be finalized.

But on August 26th, the first Stable release of the toolkit designed to let developers of social games leverage Microsoft’s Cloud platform went live, sporting a range of enhancements that will sure come in handy when building Windows Azure projects.

“This is the third drop of the code we have done since we first introduced this project about 6 weeks ago,” revealed Nathan Totten, Windows Azure technical evangelist at Microsoft.

“This release adds several new features, improves the performance and stability of the server APIs, and contains many user interface improvements to the sample game. These tools will help make it easier for developers to build great game experiences across devices in less time and lower cost.”

Windows Azure Toolkit for Social Games version 1.0 is accompanied by Tankster, a game offered to devs as a proof-of-concept project showing just what kind of experiences can be built with the toolkit.

Cloud-based social games created with Windows Azure Toolkit for Social Games can leverage aspects of HTML 5 such as Game Play, Turn Management, Animations, Inventory, Leaderboard, Events, Chat (Real-Time Communication), Social Sharing (Like, Tweet, etc.) and Audio.

The RTM version of the toolkit also introduces the following Server APIs: Authentication, Game Management, Eventing, User Profiles, Leaderboards, Inventory, Real-Time Communication (Chat, etc.), Notifications, and In-App Purchases.

The promise from Totten is that the Windows Azure Toolkit for Social Games will continue to evolve.

“While this release represents a significant milestone in this project, we have much more planned and will continue to keep the updates coming,” he stated.

Windows Azure Toolkit for Social Games is available for download here.