XNA Everywhere

Filling up for the keynote

Today was the first keynote day. John Schappert of Microsoft took to the stage and told us where XNA is going. The answer is everywhere. The long awaited "YouTube for gamers" is taking shape, which will make it possible for creators to put their XNA content out there for anyone to play.

John Schappert watches one of the demos.

This was nice, but nothing that had not been expected. What came next was a bit out of the blue though, in a wonderful way. Chris Mitchell came on and started talking about portable code. And showed XNA running on a Zune. Running very nicely too. This means that soon we will be able to create mobile XNA games as well as Xbox 360 ones.  Very cool. XNA developers are now mobile developers too. Wahay!

This really hardened my resolve to get a new Zune (and might explain why the larger ones are suddenly harder to get hold of). Fortunately Derek had put me on to one in stock in Circuit City, so right after the keynote I was straight out for an 8 block walk up the hill to get it. And I have. And it is ace. And soon I will be able to write games for it.

There are some sessions tomorrow on how things are going to work. I'm really looking forward to them and I'll post details as soon as I know myself. This GDC just came alive for me. Wonderful stuff. And, just to make the morning perfect, I saw someone pick up and take away one of my VerySillyGames prints....