XNA Phase Out?

Well, on WP side of things, Microsoft definitely downgraded the importance of XNA as a framework in switch to Windows Phone 8. You can't anymore build XNA apps that use WP8 specific features, so even though WP7.X targeted XNA apps continue to run on WP8, you can't target WP8 with XNA.

In long term, for MMF2 developers and Clickteam, I guess this means that focus should be on HTML5 exporter and perhaps some variant of C++ runtime that can be used to build games on Windows 8 phones and tablets.

Wow thats interesting.

Are they going to go to an HTML5 only format for apps on the phone?
I think this would be a mistake.

No, Windows Phone 8 has also native C++/C# support (I wonder if MMF2's C++ runtime with some modifications could be used for this?).

But very likely HTML5 + Javascript will play quite a big role in apps distributed through Windows Store in the mid/long term, looking how Microsoft prioritizes things atm. By contrast, .NET and XNA have been quite heavily deprioritized.

Wow, this is incredible news... albeit probably expected. They started dropping support for XBLIG rather quickly, in fact effective immediately when they made the decision and now all the XBLIG'ers are having to work on their own with absolute 0 support.

If they choose HTML5 as the only option then it's not too bad we have the exporter coming, however if it supports Native C++/C# then who knows, maybe Francois and CT could adapt the XNA plugin into a usable exporter specifically for Windows 8.

They already dropped XNA support in Windows 8. Window phone 8 still supports it although only out of necessity as otherwise they would loose too many apps.

Although you can of course pay Microsoft $99/year for the privilege of being an XBLIG developer, even though as Danny said they literally offer 0 support for the service- which seems incredibly unfair.

It's a real shame as I really like the XNA exporter, and it's really cool to have our games play on an actual console too.

Basically what I think they are saying is that it will not be supported on any new Microsoft devices come April 2014. By then we'll have the new xbox system and probably windows phone 9. But you still have a lot of devices to target until then to develop for at least.

I am definitively going to work on making the HTML5 runtime aprooved for publishing apps on WP, Android etc. after the first initial release.
And we'll publish the method to use to get your game in the different shops.

That's great news Francois, however I don't think we need to panic about XNA on windows phone, it works fine on windows phone 8 which has only recently released, so we have a few good years at worst, apps using it still look and perform great at least for games which I assume what most of us are using it for

slightly off topic do you think the HTML5 runtime could be used to compile apps for the windows store for Windows 8 and Windows RT? (HTML5 being one of the languages compatible with the runtime)?

Great news HTML5 sounds like it will be a fantastic exporter.

Francois, any ETA on the HTML 5 export module? I'm assuming we can make Windows 8 store apps with it.

We hope to go in Release Candidate soon.

Looking at the possible future of XNA, how about doing the migration of the XNA exporter to Monogame? Or that is not part of the plans right now?
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Just a thought n_n

Yes, Monogame is something I do consider.