XNA Studio 3 Beta coming this week!

[alfatreze]

Straight from the mouth/pages of the XNA Team blog

Michael Klucher
Program Manager – XNA Game Studio Team

On behalf of the XNA team I am excited to announce the upcoming availability of the XNA Game Studio 3.0 Beta. This is a significant milestone and represents the completion of all our features for XNA Game Studio 3.0! We’ll have much more information with the final release but here’s a quick glance at some of the key features and additions in the beta:

Zune

• Compatibility with the upcoming Zune 3.0 Firmware release. Please note that the XNA Game Studio 3.0 CTP will no longer work once you have upgraded your Zune device to the 3.0 firmware.
• Improved deployment stability.
• Support for Zune deployment on Windows Vista x64 Systems!
• You can now use the Remote Performance Monitor for Zune games.

Xbox 360

• Xbox 360 project templates (You will not be able to develop on the Xbox 360 until our final release. We felt this was important to include so that you could get projects converted over and look at the system, even if you are not able to run the games, yet).
• Support for the Big Button Pad.
• Framework & Visual Studio Features

Enumerate and play back media on your Windows computer or Xbox 360.
Simple sound effect support on Windows computers and Xbox 360.
Support for Rich Presence (lets friends know what’s going on in your game).
Support for Invites (ask your friends to join you in a multiplayer game) and Join Session In Progress (after you see what your friends are doing, you can join their current session with just a couple of button presses, even if that’s a different game to the one you are currently playing)
Compress your content and save space with the new content compression features!
ClickOnce packaging support for distributing your XNA Framework games on Windows.
Upgrade your project from XNA Game Studio 2.0 using the Project Upgrade Wizard!
Take screen captures of your game running on Zune through the XNA Game Studio Device Center.
Support for .NET language features like Linq
Create multiple content projects and leverage cross project synchronization in Visual Studio.
FBX importer improvements: read materials containing multiple textures, and export custom shader materials directly out of Max or Maya.

We hope that early next week you’ll give the XNA Game Studio 3.0 Beta a download and run it through its paces. As we mentioned above this beta will be very close to what our release looks like, so if you encounter ship stopping issues (crashes, hangs) please let us know through Microsoft Connect! We’ve paid close attention to your feedback and we’ve added many of the features you requested. If your feature didn’t make it in this release, don’t worry we’ve still got more to come! If you have ideas on ways we can be better share them with us through Microsoft Connect. There you can add or vote on feature suggestions that you would like to see.

We’ll post on this blog as soon as the download becomes available early next week!

[Netrix]

That should mean today or tomorrow...

[LedZepp]

Some cool things that will come with the beta:
New XNA Game Studio Feature: Zune System Media Control - Michael Klucher's Blog
New XNA Game Studio Feature: Screen Capture - Michael Klucher's Blog

It will be great to be able to finally control system volume and get battery strength

[Justananomaly]

Anyone else laughing at all the people that said "no x64 support ever probably" and the "The zune will always restart after a game"?

[sir justin]

Hm...how will we be able to put more games on that we make if we update our firmware..

haha!!! yeah! Good Point Justanomaly

[birdman]

Don't double post.

And I am looking forward to having user-created games again, even though this Hexus game is addicting as hell.

[narutor22]

Will older games still work?

[Justananomaly]

Originally Posted by narutor22

Will older games still work?

Yes, the new firmware will only accept the XNA Beta software though, not the CPT version. So as soon as it comes out you can sync your old games. As least from what I hear.

[shutout5591]

Originally Posted by Justananomaly

Yes, the new firmware will only accept the XNA Beta software though, not the CPT version. So as soon as it comes out you can sync your old games. As least from what I hear.

I heard differently. On some microsoft blog, sorry i dont have link, I read that there were inherent problems with teh ctp, which require all games to be recompiled with the latest framework. So to my understanding, the devs wil have to recompile and post.

[masonpwiley]

Originally Posted by shutout5591

I heard differently. On some microsoft blog, sorry i dont have link, I read that there were inherent problems with teh ctp, which require all games to be recompiled with the latest framework. So to my understanding, the devs wil have to recompile and post.

No, when you download games, they are not compiled. When you deploy them, it compiles them and loads them to your Zune. So all you have to do is deploy them using XNA 3.0 beta when it comes out.

[shutout5591]

Originally Posted by masonpwiley

No, when you download games, they are not compiled. When you deploy them, it compiles them and loads them to your Zune. So all you have to do is deploy them using XNA 3.0 beta when it comes out.

Thats not true. Currently games on this forum are released 2 ways: RIG - where the games are already compiled, and as a vs project. The project of these games will not be beta, but ctp, and will therefore need to be converted. As the blog said the conversion wizard will not work, the devs need to create teh new project (a better alternative to people making that new project themselves). I am 100% positive when microsoft releases official games to download, they will be compiled, and probably dotfuscated.

so, yea, beta is not compatable with ctp. We wil need to convert them.

[masonpwiley]

Originally Posted by shutout5591

Thats not true. Currently games on this forum are released 2 ways: RIG - where the games are already compiled, and as a vs project. The project of these games will not be beta, but ctp, and will therefore need to be converted. As the blog said the conversion wizard will not work, the devs need to create teh new project (a better alternative to people making that new project themselves). I am 100% positive when microsoft releases official games to download, they will be compiled, and probably dotfuscated.

so, yea, beta is not compatable with ctp. We wil need to convert them.

You could be right, but using the wrong word. VS projects are not already compiled. There might be some changes made, but nothing huge. If it was totally different, they wouldn't both be called 3.0. Usually major changes only happen when the version number changes.

[Netrix]

Originally Posted by masonpwiley

You could be right, but using the wrong word. VS projects are not already compiled. There might be some changes made, but nothing huge. If it was totally different, they wouldn't both be called 3.0. Usually major changes only happen when the version number changes.

He said there are two ways to deploy the games: RIG (already compiled) and VS Projects (not already compiled).

[Fade3e]

dude its already out...
XNA Creators Club Online - xna game studio 3.0 beta

[Zuner2012]

goto Here to obtain the XNA game studio 3.0 beta ... for all those who can't just google it

edit: woops, didn't see you already head a link up