There is and never has been such a product as XNA Professional. XNA Game Studio is the only product and is for use by anyone. See below for the background on the announced but not released professional product.
On Windows you can use it to create XNA Framework commercial games with no fees. The Live for Windows API is not available for commercial use.
On Xbox you can use it to create games which can be distributed through Xbox Live Indie games with XBL networking available. There are fees to develop and submit.There is an additional API - XBLA XNA extensions - available to licensed XBLA developers that provides achievements and leaderboards. No you can't get it by asking and it would be no use to you anyway.
On Zune you cannot create commercial games its a developer only platform.
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The history of XNA professional:
Ever since game studio express has been released the FAQ has referred to a 'professional' SKU.
Q: Can I use the XNA Game Studio Express or XNA Framework to build a commercial Xbox 360 game?
A: XNA Game Studio Express lets you create Windows and now Xbox 360 console games much more easily. These games are limited to non-commercial scenarios for 360 titles created with XNA Game Studio Express. However, XNA Game Studio Express may be used to create commercial games which target Windows. We plan to release XNA Game Studio Professional next year which will allow developers to create commercial games for the Xbox 360 in addition to Windows.
The online reference also makes reference:
XNA Game Studio Professional
XNA Game Studio Professional is a new offering targeted at the professional game developer. It will contain all the functionality present in XNA Game Studio Express and will add support for tools and services that professional game developers need to ship commercial games built using the XNA Framework on both Windows and Xbox 360 (a membership to the Xbox 360 Registered Developer Program will still be required). A beta release of XNA Game Studio Professional is currently targeted for 2007.
Game Camp Canada provided power point slides with the following content in June 2007
XNA Game Studio Professional (available Summer ‘07)
- Cross-platform tools for XBLA and MSN
- Excellent rapid prototyping tool for all games
- Full access to Xbox Live managed APIs
- Integration into VS professional tools
- Commercial games support on Xbox 360 with Publishing Agreement
Gamefest 2007 announcement
At GameFest 2007 in the keynote speech (start at 27:08) Chris Satchell stated
"We've made the decision to just go with ONE game Studio [product]......you can use Visual Studio Pro and the rest of the XNA framework......if you've got a licensing agreement with us and you want to take your creation to XBLA there will be an extra set of libraries that enable you to do this " (please listen to the whole quote its too long to put here)
So this should pretty much kill any rumours of XNA Professional as a separate sku that will be available for sale, at any price. With XNA Game Studio 2.0 supporting networking and other Visual Studio skus the 'missing' parts that make up what a commercial XBLA developer would need are only now relevant to someone with a signed publishing agreement in their hands and Microsoft have stated those parts exist once you have the agreement.
The previous rumors (included for completeness and history only)
You may hear speculation/rumour of a price point however this is confirmed as incorrect. Stephen Styrchak (Microsoft XNA team) says "I can assure you that as far as I know this is just a rumor and we haven't announced pricing on any such product or service." and Dave Mitchell says "We have never discussed or disclosed any pricing on XNA Game Studio Professional."
There are rumours of 'Pro' containing networking/Xbox Live APIs which appears confirmed by Game Camp slides. Jamie Fristom has mentioned that as the 1st commercial XNA Framework XBLA release they have access to some network APIs with a 'pre-pre-alpha of pro' but even he currently is on dev kit only for networking. Remember he is working on a signed XBLA contract so the only way to find out it to invent a killer game and get signed to XBLA. Note also that GSE 2.0 has been confirmed to have some kind of networking support.
There are rumours that 'Pro' will interface with Visual Studio Pro which aligns with the game camp Canada slide. The official statement in this is that Microsoft would like future versions of GS Express to support other languages and Visual Studio editions possibly countering the rumour of needing to buy Pro to get VS integration.
Play Kissy Poo - a game for 4 year olds on Xbox and windows
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