Yesterday Microsoft made the first official announcement of XNA Games Studio 2.0 at Gamefest 2007. It comes a year after the successful launch of the first version of the XNA Games Studio Development environment.

A public beta has not yet been released, but according to the XNA team’s blog anticipated enhancements will include:

• XNA Game Studio 2.0 works in all versions of Visual Studio 2005. This includes Standard and Professional, as well as many other specific editions.


• The new and improved interface makes it easier for you to manage your Xbox 360 console.


• You’ll find that managing and building content is easier and more consistent in XNA Game Studio.


• Project templates for content importers and processors.


• You can configure how content is processed with the new ability to set parameters on Content Processors.

There are also further enhancements to the XNA Framework itself, most significantly extensions to the available networking APIs for creating multiplayer games. Full details are in the team’s post.