XNA evolves to 2.0

At last year's Gamefest Game Technology Conference, Microsoft unveiled XNA Game Studio, a suite of tools designed to make it easier for anybody to cobble together their own PC and Xbox 360 games. This year's Gamefest 2007 show brought with it word of the first five Xbox Live Arcade games created using XNA Game Studio.

With the first XNA Game Studio titles approaching release (the first one, Torpex Games' Schizoid, is due this year), Microsoft also unveiled the first overhaul of the development tools. Set for release later this year, Microsoft's XNA Game Studio 2.0 introduces a number of enhancements and additions to the existing toolkit.

Microsoft promises that the new software will make it easier to manage and build content for games, manage the Xbox 360 console, and determine how content is processed. It will also work in any version of Visual Studio 2005, and revisions to the XNA Framework allow for more complex online multiplayer games and easier creation of nested components.

Other changes are also in the works, and Microsoft has said it will have more information as the tools near release. For more on the XNA Game Studio, check out Microsoft's XNA team blog.