Computing giant ending popular indie development toolset, but DirectX will remain
Microsoft has confirmed that it will not be producing future versions of its indie development toolset XNA.
Reports emerged yesterday that the software maker was planning to end upkeep of its XNA Game Studio, and now a spokesperson has confirmed as much to Polygon.
A former Microsoft employee shared an email that had been sent to game developers, which explained that Microsoft would no longer be maintaining the XNA toolset. That same email appeared to suggest that DirectX, the widely used API for games and video, would be phased out.
However, a Microsoft spokesperson said that there are no plans to discontinue the DirectX for its Windows and Xbox platforms.
“Microsoft is actively investing in DirectX as the unified graphics foundation for all of our platforms, including Windows, Xbox 360, and Windows Phone,” the spokesperson said.
“DirectX is evolving and will continue to evolve. We have absolutely no intention of stopping innovation with DirectX.”
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Referring to XNA, he added: “XNA Game Studio remains a supported toolset for developing games for Xbox 360, Windows and Windows Phone. Many developers have found financial success creating Xbox Live Indie Games using XNA. However, there are no plans for future versions of the XNA product.”
Unity is nicer to use with its WYSIWYG.
Like many indie devs, the news of XNA's being killed off left me thinking "ok, I've spent a lot of time working on this, so what now?"
Then I discovered Monogame - an open source implementation of XNA...
Within hours (of actual work) and with only a few minor changes to my code base, I had one of my Windows Phone XNA games running under Android. The same code still runs on the WP7 too. I've yet to test on WP8 and iOS, but I'm confident that again, it will me only a matter of minimal effort before I can bring my games to these platforms too.
And should I want to move to the desktop, Monogame also supports Windows8, MacOS and Linux. All (potentially) with my old XNA code base.
XNA isn't dead - it's just grown up, moved out, changed its name and divorced its parents... :)
