Microsoft just announced that the XNA Game Studio, the user-created games program for the Xbox 360 is coming for the Zune. The demo shown at Game Developer’s Conference shows a person controlling the game with the Zune pad, pausing the game, going out and switching music on the Zune, then going back into the game. Very neat. [via Gizmodo]

Microsoft XNA (“XNA’s Not Acronymed”) is a set of tools, complete with a managed runtime environment, provided by Microsoft, that facilitates computer game design, development, and management. XNA does this by freeing game designers from writing “repetitive boilerplate code“, and brings all aspects of game production into a single system. The XNA toolset was announced March 24, 2004, at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California. A first Community Technology Preview of XNA Build was released on March 14, 2006. XNA Game Studio 2.0 was released in December of 2007. With XNA Game Studio you can build online multiplayer games for your Zune. You can take games from Windows to Xbox to Zune.

Developers will now have the capability to develop once for all three platforms: the Xbox 360, Windows, and Zune. While developers can write one game and target any platform, cross-platform networking between all three platforms is not supported.

Keeping with Zune media experience, XNA Game Studio 3.0 integration includes discoverability and access to user’s music allowing the user to customize background soundtracks or create real-time visualizations. In addition, the XNA Community Games Platform team has announced the ability to have multiple Zunes wirelessly engage in an ad-hoc gaming experience.

A preview release of XNA Game Studio 3.0 will be available in the Spring 2008 timeframe, with a final release scheduled for the holiday 2008 season. [via XNA Creators Club Online]

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