Just in time for developers to polish their games for Community Games, XNA Game Studio 3.0 has been released. There are numerous changes, however the most important ones are:
- XNA Game Studio 3.0 now supports Visual Studio 2008 (all editions), however it does not support VS2005 anymore, so ensure you upgrade!
- Friend Invites over Live – Add the ability to let players invite their friends on the Xbox/G4W Live network.
- Automatic Asset compression – this one is obvious
- New Media system – now you can add MP3 files to your content folder and play them using the new Media namespace.
- Zune support
- One Click installation for Windows games
Remember, if you live in the USA and some parts of Europe, Xbox Live Community Games will be released with the New Xbox Experience on the 19th of November.
Download XNA Game Studio 3.0 today!
Update: From the updated FAQ:
“Creators Club Premium members in the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Denmark, Ireland and Spain will be able to sell their games. We'll be adding support for other regions later in 2009 and beyond but these are the only countries where XNA is enabled to pay their residents.”