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Microsoft rebrands XNA Creators Club as App Hub

When Microsoft first launched the XNA toolset, it was aimed at making cross-platform game development easier for independent game designers, and providing a framework to target them towards not only various Windows operating systems, but the Zune and Xbox 360 as well. To target the Xbox 360, one had to pay an annual membership of $99, which made you a part of the community to submit games for sale directly on the console. It’s actually a pretty innovative approach to letting the individual developer a way into console games creation,…

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Windows Phone 7 MIX 2010 impressions

Microsoft officially announced Windows Phone 7 Series (WP7S) back at Mobile World Congress this past February, but a lot of details were left out.  Now that the MIX developers conference has wrapped up, there’s a lot more to pour through, from 3rd party development to multitasking and much more. In short, there’s a lot of good new ideas in the new OS, but there are also some drawbacks, especially if you consider yourself a power user.

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Full 3D gaming on Microsoft’s Windows Phone demoed

Engadget managed to get a hands on of a couple of Windows Phone 7 games built with XNA Game Studio 4.0. Although they weren’t allowed to take any video of the games in action, they said it did work, including unlocking achievements. The more impressive of the two was a top down sci-fi looking dungeon crawler called The Harvest, running at the full 800×480 Windows Phone 7 resolution. The other is called Battle Punks and is a one-on-one fighting game. Although there’s no in-game action of either, they did post…

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Windows Phone 7 development details surface

Recent interviews, as well as leaked developer docs for Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 Series help put together some interesting pieces of the puzzle left in the wake of the Mobile World Congress announcement a few days back. A few of those questions included multitasking, backwards compatibility and partner customizations. It’s clear in the documentation that WP7S will be capable of multitasking, both full background applications and a background notification system. Although the functionality does exist, to what extent can developers make use of it is another matter. Also, as for…

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