XNA beta 2 coming soon with Live Anywhere Support
The XNA team will make their Game Studio 2.0 beta available for download soon, and according to the team’s blog post last week, feature complete. One of the more exciting features coming is support for network games between Xbox 360 consoles and Windows machines. Live Anywhere, as this ability was originally dubbed at E3 last year, is an architecture to allow games to interact across any platform available (desktops, consoles, and mobile devices).
The first game to ship that supported Live Anywhere was Shadowrun, which PC Gamer felt wasn’t all it could be. It seems clear that development of the game was focused primarily on proving the cross-platform concept, and hopefully future implementations of Live Anywhere won’t sacrifice sheer entertainment.
Enter the soon-to-be released XNA 2.0 beta. By providing game developers of every stripe the ability to provide network gaming between my friend Dan at his desk, and myself on the couch, we each will be able to have our preferred experience. A brief word to developers: might I recommend starting small? Build a port of Drug Wars that I can play with a couple mates, then worry about the flashy graphics.
(Network Gaming with XNA - Ed Dunhill’s Blog)