XNA Game Studio, the technology that allows you to develop C# games on the PC, 360 and utilise Live has a new update.  Note how "Express" is now not affixed to the end :-)

This preview release of XNA Game Studio 3.0 is now available through the XNA Creators Club Online site (http://creators.xna.com), with a final release scheduled for Christmas 2008.  Please download and test out the new stuff though, feedback is important to the team!

Key points

Features

• The XNA Community Games Platform team has delivered on their promise to enable game development for Zune devices with the release of the XNA Game Studio 3.0 Community Technical Preview (CTP).  Some key features that are available in this release:
• Create and deploy 2D games for all Zune v1 and v2 devices
• Ability to support local ad-hoc wireless play with multiple Zunes.
• Discoverability/access to user’s music – allowing the user to customize background soundtracks or create real-time visualizations
• Improved sound effect API (drop sound files directly into the content pipeline).
• Either Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition and higher (C# language support must be installed), or Visual C# 2008 Express Edition are required to install and run the XNA Game Studio 3.0 CTP

Limitations

· Please note this current CTP does not enable Xbox 360 game development.  Only Windows and Zune are supported in this CTP.  If you want to build and deploy games for the Xbox 360, you must continue using XNA Game Studio 2.0 for now.

· Visual Studio 2005 SKUs are not supported with XNA Game Studio 3.0 and beyond.  However, you do not need to uninstall Visual Studio 2005 or XNA Game Studio 2.0, as those products will work side-by-side with Visual Studio 2008 and XNA Game Studio 3.0 CTP.

About today's announcement

Today the XNA Community Games Platform team has delivered the first CTP of XNA Game Studio 3.0, enabling developers to build games for Zune.  XNA Game Studio 3.0 allows all game developers to create unique and imaginative games for the entire family of Zune media devices.  This feature gives game developers access to the majority of the XNA framework APIs while retaining a seamless sense of integration with the Zune media experience.  Using these tools, developers will have the capability to develop once for all three platforms: the Xbox 360, Windows, and Zune in the final release of XNA Game Studio 3.0.  Developers can write one game and target any platform, however, cross-platform networking between all three platforms is not supported. 

Keeping with Zune media experience, the XNA Game Studio 3.0 CTP integration includes discoverable access to user’s non-DRM music – allowing the user to customize background soundtracks or create real-time visualizations.  In addition, the XNA Community Games Platform team has announced the ability to create networked games on Zunes using the built in ad-hoc wireless capabilities.