Exploring the new VS 2008 suite and the express editions and was suddenly very confused.

The VS express editions includes a new Game Development area (good so far), problem is it's not using XNA?

It seems for the 2008 editions they are promoting C++ and "The Game Creators Club" (the heralds of one of XNA's competitors, Dark Basic) as the game developers choice.

Now I started gamedev in C++ (slowly) and happily moved to XNA when the beta came out as the way to go. Production was easier and the learning curve was not as steep.  Now here comes Microsofts new flagship development suite and XNA is not even mentioned?

What's going on?

Darkside:

Now I started gamedev in C++ (slowly) and happily moved to XNA when the beta came out as the way to go. Production was easier and the learning curve was not as steep.  Now here comes Microsofts new flagship development suite and XNA is not even mentioned?

I found this page that advertises both:

http://www.microsoft.com/express/gamedevelopment/

The GDK is for VC++ 2008, XNA GSE is for VC# 2005.

The similar-but-completely-different marketing is certainly confusing, I'll grant you that, but at least they mentioned us! :-)

Granted that since XNA is not yet ready for C# 2008 due to timescales and compatibility but a note of promise to get there might have been nice.

And granted MS has to try and meet the needs of the many and offer alternatives for those who don't want to jump from the C++ camp.

Strange thing is that the material going out only mentions the C++ express partnership with the GDK library and I'm (almost) certain that when I've visited the page before it didn't mention XNA (even mentioning 2005 products on a new release!) but at least it's an improvement.

All hail mighty XNA (lol)

(Although XNA did not make it to the samples page, hmm)

Oh well all mutter for not much

"You can please some of the people all of the time..." , but their will always be some annoying git in the background reminding you of the rest of the saying"