XNA Game Studio 4.0 Brings 3D Games to Windows Phone 7

Microsoft will show version 4.0 of XNA Game Studio at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. In addition to cross-platform development tools, this new version includes support for 3D games on Windows Phone 7.

Technology website Engadget got from Microsoft on the GDC a demonstration of the new XNA Game Studio. Earlier, Microsoft showed how the development environment can be used to make games for the Xbox 360 and the PC as well as Windows Phone 7.

Microsoft showed demos of two 3D games for Windows Phone 7. The Harvest is an isometric perspective action game where the environment can be destroyed. Screenshots from this game make it clear that the Xbox Live achievement system can also be used for Windows Phone 7 games. The second game is a port of the online fighting game Battle Punks. This game debuted on Facebook earlier this month and was originally written in Java.

XNA Game Studio 4.0 is fully integrated into Visual Studio 2010 and uses Direct3D as its graphics API. Android and iPhone OS use OpenGL ES to render graphics. According to Engadget, the latest version of XNA Game Studio does not yet provide an easy way to port OpenGL ES games to Direct3D.

On his blog, Microsoft’s Michael Klucher also announced that the Zune and Zune HD are no longer supported in the new version of XNA. Zune developers rely on the older 3.1 version. Microsoft is urging these developers to port their games to the Windows Phone 7 platform.