It's hard to believe the runaway popularity XNA has achieved in the
short period of time since it was released in late 2006. At that time, I
got together with a couple friends to check out (with some trepidation,
I must confess) whether games really could be written in managed code.
We were very excited, and everyone wanted to know if you could get the
same benefits you obtain from writing games using managed code as you do
when creating standard Windows programs. We knew people in the game
programming community were worried about managed code's execution speed,
and many people simply didn't believe a "real" game could be created
using XNA. As time passed, though, more and more people began to realize
the truth: there are a great number of benefits to using managed code,
and the performance concerns are exaggerated. You haven't experienced
the full potential of the Xbox 360 or, indeed, Windows until you've
created your own homegrown games for these innovative systems--and with
the XNA Framework, the only limit is your imagination! From an
educational perspective, due to its simplicity, XNA is also a great
choice for anyone who wants to learn or teach the C# programming
language. That's not to mention the fact that game development offers an
excellent common ground for collaboration between computer science
students and their counterparts in other disciplines such music, the
arts, design, and so on.
