After being announced by J Allard at GDC two years ago (and again last year), Microsoft unveiled their XNA framework this morning, kicking off this year's GDC event. The tools are designed to streamline the development process, and facilitate porting of titles from the Windows environment to the 360 and vice-versa.
They've also announced that they're opening their Xbox Live Server Platform to publishers and developers. It appears this will allow game developers to add more functionality into their Live implementation and "can also be used to support the creation of massively multiplayer online game worlds." What's that? MMOs? A response to Blizzard COO Paul Sams' criticism that the Xbox Live is a "walled garden" or was that obfuscation until a real announcement can be made?
This announcement is ostensibly in lieu of a keynote from Redmond this year, and the raison d’être for Wednesday's blogger's breakfast with Peter Moore and Chris Satchell (GM of Game Developer Group... the XNA guys).
UPDATE: If you're really curious, you can check out the presentation, via Major Nelson. He also teases, "...the XNA team will be making some announcements. They are starting to trickle out... plus I am told more ‘wickedly cool tech’ news will happen later this week once the event kicks off and they start showing demos." Tip of the iceberg?
