[Kilorn]

Found this article earlier while browsing my usual places and thought it was an interesting read for anyone who wants to develop using XNA. While I've been one of the biggest supporters of XNA over the years, this article gives you a firsthand look at what it's like to be an XNA developer in the real world. It's not all peaches and cream, that's for sure.

http://www.theindies...th-of-an-indie/

[DivideByZero]

I'm in the same kinda of position as that guy, I love the simplicity and accessibility of XNA, but it being windows only really hurts it as a game framework.
Everytime I work my ass off making games for competitions, I get loads of "can't run it on my _____" comments.
It's really demoralising to put all that effort in, and have it only available for a certain percentage of people
I tried other cross platform frameworks, but I always seem to go back to XNA.

This post has been edited by DivideByZero: 12 July 2011 - 08:03 AM

[Kilorn]

XNA can be cross-platform, but it takes some work. You have to implement MonoGame into your project, which will allow it to run on Apple products such as Mac, iPhone, iPod, and iPad, but it adds quite a bit to the work that you are required to do, which kind of derails the whole ease of use that XNA brings to the table. I too wish that XNA was cross-platform out of the box without having to resort to tricks and other framework integration to be able to achieve.

[bonyjoe]

PC is still where the majority of gamers are though when it comes to cheap and cheerful games, xbox and WP7 are just added benefits. If you look around you can find many successful XNA developed games. Magicka and Beat Hazard are two that instantly spring to mind, there's also Terraria but it may be unfair to mention it as it has steeped on Minecrafts shoulders to gain a large following.

Getting your game onto steam is probably the best way to get it out there, Breath of Death and Cthulu Saves The World recently released onto it and I'm sure they have probably made more money in their short time on there than the past 2 years that they have been on XNA Indie Games.

For Microsoft to get XNA working on other platforms would take cooperation from those platforms and this certainly would not come from Apple if Microsoft is going to be the one reaping the rewards. And in the end it's based on Directx anyway, I'd much rather they spent the time making the most out of it than working finding workarounds that mean features will be available on Mac or linux etc.

Basically you can't have everything.