This week at GDC (The Game Developer Conference), Microsoft is starting to get real about XNA. The XNA Framework, which is a implementation of the .NET framework, allows companies to write games once and have the games work on the PC and XBOX 360. It will also allow for cross-play and connectivity (I could play Halo on my PC against someone playing Halo on their XBOX). The two big pieces that developers are going to hear about this week are XNA Studio and Xbox Live Services Platform. XNA Studio is a development environment built on top of Visual Studio.NET 2005 Team System. The XBox Live Services allows folks to write backend Live servers that add functionality to on-line game play.

So what does this all mean? Microsoft is trying to allow developers to write games and have them work and play together nicely ... all on Microsoft operating systems and consoles. The PC game market has been declining for a while, but developers will love the ability to write games once and hit both markets without lots of conversion costs and time. This could give Microsoft a real advantage over getting developers to create exclusives for the XBox 360.