Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express 2.0 Beta

4.2 out of 5 stars 4.2 (20 votes)

BETA (November 19, 2007)

Windows Vista/XP / Freeware / 4,784 downloads

XNA Game Studio Express enables individuals and small teams to more easily create video games using new, optimized cross-platform gaming libraries for Windows and Xbox 360. This beta release targets the development of games for Windows. The final version of XNA Game Studio Express will be available this holiday season and will enable development of games which target Windows and upon purchase of a XNA Creators Club subscription, the Xbox 360 as well.

  • Publisher

    Microsoft Corp.

  • Homepage

    Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express

  • Latest Changes

    - Improved performance along with new features such as expanded support for Visual Studio 2005 products

    - Networking and multiplayer support

    - XNA Game Studio Device Center

    - Easier Xbox 360 connectivity

    - Integrated game content projects

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Reviews of Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express

  1. 5 out of 5 stars
    Arakiel

    Reviewing 1.0 (Dec 11, 2006)

    Dunno where that idiot drumcat gets his "information" from but it's only $99 a year if you intend to make a commercial product. For personal use its free to use/debug/play etc...

  2. 2 out of 5 stars
    drumcat

    Reviewing 1.0 (Dec 11, 2006)

    Baloney this is freeware. You can write whatever you want, but to play, debug, or distribute, you have to pay $99/year.

    I guess it's a miscategorization more than anything, but I see that as deceptive...

  3. 4 out of 5 stars
    guitardave78

    Reviewing Beta 1 (Aug 30, 2006)

    Having had a look this seems like a nice way to do exactly what it is meant to do (having read th ems site).
    Enable you to use .net to create cross platform games for windows and xbox 360.

    I think the description is misleading though. It is not some gamecreator style program. It is a hook into the libraries needed to create these cross platform games. You still need c#!!

    Hope they allow you toplay these games on the 360 without huge licensing fees!!

  4. 2 out of 5 stars
    BootBlock

    Reviewing Beta 1 (Aug 30, 2006)

    Sorry, I'm not even vaguely impressed. Going through the included SpaceWars game - which, incidentally, doesn't work for me because it requires an Xbox controller - source shows that it still requires huge dollops of code to do even the simplist things. Because of this, I regard this as a way of using VS 2005+ to write games for Windows and the Xbox as opposed to making games quicker to write. One of the flavours of Blitz still seems to be the way to go in creating non-triple A games.

    Edit: Well, I wasn't exactly thinking along the lines of Click & Play, but more so utility libraries and such; having to mess about with visualisation matrices seems kinda silly (excluding for advanced effects) when we have tools like this available and you just wanna plonk down a viewport camera.

    I forgot to mention: this requires Visual C# Express Edition to work. This annoyed me as I already have Visual Studio 2005 C# (and all the rest) installed and it didn't make use of any of it. I see *why* it didn't, but, well ...

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