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Microsoft’s Andre Vrignaud live-tweeted the Xbox Live on WP7 session that took place at GDC today.
Q: Will games have to go through cert? Or just XBL games? A: all games go through cert, XBL games will have a few more reqs.
Other resources: Windows Azure – microsoft.com/windowsazure
Other resources: pitch your Xbox LIVE-enabled game: wpgames@microsoft.com
Wrapping up… get the dev tools at creator.xna.com, go to MIX10 for more next week!
Focusing on asynch (turn-based) “mobile minute” friendly gaming at launch. No ad-hoc local WiFi/Bluetooth gaming initially.
Most APIs are present on all platforms – make it easier to write clear, crossplatform code.
Why Push? Efficent battery util, low memory/CPU use, simple model, no persistent connection required, web 2.0 friendly.
@smartyp Yes, these WP7/XBL capabilities are available to both Silverlight and XNA-based games.
Push Notif. to Tile: Allows you to push visual notif. to pinned tiles on user’s home page. See at a glance what’s up in game.
Notifications not guaranteed delivery – best effort.
Notifications: Raw (cloud notifies app), Tile (user pins notif. to quick launch menu), Toast (Cloud sends a title and sub)
Extend games with HTTP: consume 3PP web services (weather, shopping), connect to own WS. We will have policies, need to talk with us.
Game Invites handled through email; player chooses email recipients.
Avatars: 2D avatars for launch, via web service.
Trial Mode: developer owns trial experience. Simple check, can be simulated to test. Send player to Marketplace to purchase.
XBL Leaderboard data blob is 4KB – place to store ghosts, races, game data, etc. Some cool stuff you could do here with this!
Leaderboards: Track friends, score or time-based, fixed set of columns, game defined blob of data, paging, easy API.
Think I see a blog post ahead about Achievements best practices, recommendations, and learnings we’ve had over the years…
Achievements: real achievements, real gamerscore. Up to 20 achievements, 200 GS max.
Profile: your WP7 phone knows you by your Windows LIVE ID (associated with your Gamertag). Use existing WLID, or create new.
XBL conn. opt: HTTP req/resp, push notifications, XBL features (2D avatars, invites, profile, achievements, lb, trials)
XBL at fingertips with WP7. Games Hub = where XBL meets WP7 OS. Profile, game library, turn notifications, browse spotlight.
Some aditional XNA Game Studio 4.0 information was also posted by Charlie Kindel:
XNA Game Studio 4.0
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- Power: XNA Game Studio 4.0 includes powerful audio and graphics tools that allow developers to create all types of games, from casual 2-D games to 3-D games with high-quality graphics.
- Productivity: XNA Game Studio 4.0 is a managed code platform, which means that Microsoft has done the back-end work that will save developers time in the coding process. It allows developers to be more productive and focus on gameplay and design.
- Portability: XNA Game Studio 4.0 makes it possible for developers to adapt games built on previous versions of XNA Game Studio to work on Windows Phone 7 Series without re-coding the entire game. Also, once a developer has created a Windows Phone 7 Series game, they can use some of that code in XNA Game Studio 3.1 to adapt that game for Xbox 360, Windows or Zune.
XNA Game Studio 4.0 is a set of software tools that will be used by developers to create games for Windows Phone 7 Series. This updated version of XNA Game Studio will allow game developers to create better mobile games faster by providing:
Pedigree: Microsoft has invested in XNA Game Studio for the past four years to make it one of the most comprehensive and trusted tools for developers. There have been over 1 million downloads of previous versions of XNA Game Studio since its initial release in December 2006
Game Development on Windows Phone 7 Series
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- Collect Achievements and build your Gamerscore
- View Xbox LIVE leaderboards
- See your Xbox LIVE Avatar
- Access Spotlight feeds
- Add Xbox LIVE friends to your friends list while out on the go
Windows Phone 7 Series is a whole new approach to phone software, distinguished by smart design and truly integrated experiences. It offers users new ways to find and play games, including:
The games hub. The games hub will contain all the games an individual has acquired through the Windows® Phone Marketplace. We are partnering with a select group of publishers to create great Xbox LIVE games for the games hub. The Xbox LIVE features include the ability to:
The marketplace hub. Windows Phone 7 Series includes the Windows® Phone Marketplace, where apps and games will be sold. Both independent and professional developers can offer games as apps via Marketplace, giving consumers a wide array of games to choose from.
GDC isn’t finished yet so we can expect more WP7S info in the coming days (and next week at MIX). Stay tuned…
This was….unexpected. Motorola and Microsoft have just announced a new alliance for search and mapping on Android. Starting in Q1 2010 all Motorola Android handsets sold in China will feature Bing Search & Maps. I see this as Microsoft’s payback to Google in regards to what happened to the Bing Search deal with Verizon last year (you know what they say about Karma..):
LIBERTYVILLE, Ill., March 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT) today announced a global alliance with Microsoft Corp. (NYSE: MSFT) to deploy Bing services on Motorola devices powered by Android. This new offering, launching in China on smartphones in Q1, will provide consumers a choice when using search and map functions on their Android-based devices.
With this collaboration, consumers will enjoy a pre-loaded Bing bookmark on their mobile browser and an enhanced search widget with Bing integration. By enabling users to customize their devices and select their own Search provider, Motorola, with help from Microsoft, is expanding the capabilities and range of services currently offered in the marketplace and opening the doors for increased personalization.
“We believe that consumer choice is one of the most critical components to ensuring a rich and seamless client experience,” said Christy Wyatt, corporate vice president of software and services, Motorola Mobile Devices. “Motorola and Microsoft have enjoyed a longstanding collaboration and the addition of Bing services to our Android-based smartphones in China is another important step in empowering our end-users.”
“Mobile devices continue to be a critical place for customers to access location-based services such as local search and mapping,” said Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of the Online Services Division at Microsoft. “We are pleased to expand our long-standing relationship with Motorola to bring powerful Bing location-based services to Motorola’s innovative new mobile devices, providing consumers with more choice and flexibility in mobile search.”
Search and Maps capabilities through Microsoft will initially be available in China, starting in Q1 2010, through either pre-load or over-the-air updates for devices already in market.
This is clearly the result of Google’s decision to shut-down Google Search in china (causing Android OEMs to be unable to sell their phones in the country)
Source: PRNewswire
Google released the r3 version of the Android NDK yesterday finally bringing OpenGL ES 2.0 support for developers (OGL ES 2.0 is only avaialable on the SnapDrgaon and TI OMAP 3XXX chipsets).
Toolchain improvement
The toolchain binaries have been refreshed for this release with GCC 4.4.0, which should generate slightly more compact and efficient machine code than the previous one (4.2.1).
Note that the GCC 4.4.0 C++ frontend is more pedantic, and may refuse to compile certain rare and invalid template declarations that were accepted by 4.2.1. To alleviate the problem, this NDK still provides the 4.2.1 binaries, which can optionally be used to build your machine code.
OpenGL ES 2.0 support
Applications targeting Android 2.0 (API level 5) or higher can now directly access OpenGL ES 2.0 features. This brings the ability to control graphics rendering through vertex and fragment shader programs, using the GLSL shading language.
A new trivial sample, named “hello-gl2″, demonstrates how to render a simple triangle using both shader types.
Name simplification
This NDK release is just called “r3″, for “Revision 3″, to indicate that it is not limited to a specific Android platform/API level. Some developers thought that the previous release’s name (1.6_r1) was confusing and indicated that it could only be used to target Android 1.6, which was not true.
With Microsoft pushing mobile gaming as one of the main Windows Phone 7 Series it will be intersting to see Google’s (and its OEMs) answer. Head over to the Android dev blog for mor info.
Following the announcment of XNA Game Studio 4.0Microsoft just unveiled the first screenshots of 2 3D games currently being developed for Windows Phone 7 Series. The first one is The Harvesta Diablo-like action game featuring destructible 3D environments developed by Luma Arcade. The second one, Battle Punks developed by Gravity Bear, is a sword-fighting Facebook game. Microsoft also confirmed what I told you guys in my WP7 article: Direct3D is going to be only 3D API supported on Windows Phone 7 Series. So OpenGL apps/Games will have to be ported. Suffice to say that Microsoft is going hard at the competition (Apple/Android). Engadget also had a short XNA/3-screens dev demo at the GDC (basically the same thing we saw a few days ago):
The BGR boys got a chance to unbox the the US T-Mobile version of the HTC HD2 ahead of the March 16 launch event. Nothing new we haven’t seen before other than the fact that the T-Mobile box does look a lot nicer than the international one.
Source: BGR
As expected Microsoft as finally announced XNA Game Studio 4.0 at GDC today. This new version new lets developers develop games for Windows Phone 7, Windows PC & Xbox 360 (note the missing Zune HD…) and adds the following features:
- Hardware accelerated 3D API’s on Windows Phone 7 Series
- Visual Studio 2010 integration with our toolset
- Added buffered audio support to the Audio API’s
- And much, much more!
It will also include deep XBOX Live integration to enable seamless gaming on the 3 support platforms (as seen in this video)Another important point noted by Microsoft’s Michael Klucher, is the fact that the Zune HD (and original Zune) won’t be supported in 4.0 so those who still want to develop for it will have to use the currently release 3.1 version. Remember that “every Windows Phone 7 Series phone is now a Zune”..:
When we first announced XNA was a development platform for the Windows Phone 7 Series last week and followed up with some real-time Twitter Q&A (@WP7Dev), we got a lot of questions about Zune/Zune HD and how that will work with XNA Game Studio 4.0. Development for the Zune and Zune HD will continue to exist in XNA Game Studio 3.1, however, in XNA Game Studio 4.0, we’re encouraging you to migrate your games over to the Windows Phone 7 Series platform. We tested this a lot during development and had games like Hexic and Goo Splat up and running in an hour or so, it’s very easy! Finally, we learned some valuable lessons on launching a development platform. One of those lessons is that you need a way to bring your ideas to consumers at launch. All of us at Microsoft have heard that feedback, and I will say that it doesn’t matter what type of game developer you are, you’ll be able to find the perfect audience on Windows Phone 7 series. I know you’ll have a lot of questions about how this will work so I urge you to stay tuned to MIX ’10 where we’ll be streaming sessions live to the world and ready to answer more of your questions.
For more info head over here and here.
Looks like my thoughts/predictions are turning out to be true. In my post titled “Apple vs HTC: Why not sue Samsung & LG ? Is it good news for Microsoft?” I suggested that Apple’s attack against HTC/Android can be seen as an oportinity for Microsoft to promote the new Windows Phone 7 Series OS:
….what’s interesting to me here is Microsoft’s new position in this case. One thing that HTC isn’t happy about lately is the fact that they can’t add their Sense UI on top of the newly announced Windows Phone 7 Series OS, but this could be a “good thing” for them in the long run if Apple manages to stop them from selling devices featuring Sense (in the US). The most logical “solution” for them would be to develop Windows Phone 7 Series handsets (no Sense or any other OEM UI on there). Unless Apple decides to go against Microsoft this is a win-win situation for the software giant. Microsoft can now say to OEMs all over the world that if they don’t want to get in trouble with “sue-happy” Apple they should use WP7on their smartphones and ditch Android.
This has now been confirmed by Oppenheimer’s Yair Reiner who issued a behind-the-scenes report on the Apple vs HTC story:
Even before the lawsuit, handset makers were having second thoughts about Google, which with the Nexus One had become a direct competitor. Now their faith in Android as the easiest and cheapest way to counter the iPhone has been shaken, says Reiner. The unintended consequence, he suggests, is to send them into the arms of Microsoft (MSFT) and Win7 Mobile.
“Our checks,” writes Reiner, “indicate that Microsoft has been quick to sniff out this burgeoning opportunity and has begun to aggressively promote the strength of its own IP portfolio, as well as its willingness to join battle with customers that come under IP attack.”
An other thing I I talk about was the reason why Apple attacked HTC:
Apple isn’t going to commit suicide and sue the companies that help them build their own products, that’s why they decided to attack a company that is in no way related to them.
Reiners take on this :
Why pick on HTC? Reiner speculates that as the earliest and most aggressive user of Android, HTC was the perfect proxy for Apple’s real target: Google (GOOG). It helped that Apple and HTC didn’t have any supplier relationships that could be disrupted by a protracted legal battle.
You check out more of his thoughts and background on the whole Apple vs OEMs subject here
The Blurry Cam Man did it again…this time it’s the HTC Supersonic turn. Not much can be said about it other than it looks (as expected) like the HTC HD2 but will run Android 2.X instead of Windows Mobile and be WiMax compatible. The Supersonic aka A9292 is expected to launch on Sprint this Summer if all goes as planned.
Source: Youtube
T-Mobile US just sent invites to a couple of US websites for their HTC HD2 launch event taking place in New York city on March 16th. What everybody wants to know is if the handset will be upgradeable to WP7 especially given the date of this event (it’s taking place right after the start of Microsoft’s MIX event in Las Vegas). Let’s all wait and see (and try not to get our hopes up..). According to Mobi.tv which has an app on the HD2, the official launch date is March 23rd.
Source: Engdaget
The LG eXpo which launched last December on AT&T seems to be suffering from several production/manufacturing issues according to Art Stewart, vice president of wireless products AuthenTec provider of the fingerprint sensor found on the eXpo. LG “has antenna issues” with e devices and “We shipped thousands of [sensors] to LG…but there has been a delay,” Stewart told Forbes. On the other hand LG and AT&T are claimed that the handset is currently out-of-stock because of “strong demand” and that “We are working with all our partners to address this issue and expect to have product available soon.” Let’s hop that LG finally fixes whatever is wrong before the launch on their Window Phone 7 Series handset (LG Panther).
Source: Forbes
Looks like T-Mobile is getting ready to launch the HTC HD2 in a few days. The latest rumored date is still March 24th (some people are claiming March 17th now). This US version of the HD2 packs more ROM than the international version (1Gb vs 512Mb), a 16GB Micro-SD card (with the 2 transformers movies on there) and an update Sense UI with an integrated eBook reader and Document viewer. But the most important question right now is: Will it be upgradeable to Windows Phone 7 Series? Don’t foget to check out my HTC HD2 review.
Source TMonews via Engadget
 HTC Legend, HTC Desire, HTC HD2, HTC HD Mini latest trio of handset is now available for pre-order on Amazon’s UK website right now (sim-free & unlocked). The Legend and Desire are shceduled to start shipping on April 1 and April 14th for the HD Mini. HTC’s top-of-the-line Android phone ( HTC Desire) will set you back £528.68, the HTC Legend £399.9 and the finally £369.00 for the HTC HD Mini.
Source: Amazon UK (Desire, Legend, HD Mini)
Here’s a video (that probably shouldn’t even be on YouTube yet) of Microsoft’s Eric Rudder’s keynote at TechEd Middle-East in Dubai demonstrating an Indiana Jones game build using XNA and running on the PC, Windows Phone 7 Series and XBOX 360. Multi-Platform development (thanks to XNA & Silverlight) is going to be Microsoft’s big selling point during GDC & MIXthis month. Using both frameworks will enable developers to easily build/code games and applications for multiple platforms without too much hassle.
Details of the 12 Windows Phone 7 Series sessions at MIX are now officially announced. As you can see it’s all about XNA & Silverlight:
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Unit Testing Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 Applications
Learn how to create and maintain Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 Series applications using the Silverlight Unit Test Framework. See what tools are available to easily validate controls and application interfaces, add automatic testing to builds, and gain a solid understanding of test principles to deliver great experiences for your clients and customers.
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Silverlight Performance on Windows Phone
Learn how to optimize your Silverlight code for Windows Phone. This session will discuss common bottlenecks using the graphics and managed stacks, and will highlight how to optimize startup and reaction time.
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Distributing and Monetizing Windows Phone Applications and Games
- Todd Biggs in Mandalay Ballrom A on Wednesday at 10:30 AM
Windows Phone Marketplace will revolutionize distribution of Windows Phone applications, games, and content, and is designed to solve the two largest problems of the Windows Phone consumer-focused developer community: distribution and monetization. This session will provide application developers with the insights, tools, and processes necessary to begin distributing and monetizing their applications on the Windows Phone platform.
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Development and Debugging Tools for Building XNA Games for Windows Phone
- Cullen Waters in Mandalay Ballrom A on Wednesday at 9:00 AM
This session covers tools available to the developer for building XNA games including debugging, emulation, and performance. Special emphasis is placed on best practices for managed code performance and .NET profiling tools you can use to optimize your games for windows phone.
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Windows Phone Application Platform Architecture
- Istvan Cseri in Mandalay Ballrom A on Tuesday at 4:30 PM
Windows Phone 7 Series represents a significant change from the past. The entire stack, starting with the operating system, user experience, and the application platform have been engineered to build a new class of phone that users will just love. This session will go under the covers and describe how to think about applications and games from the perspective of user experience, security, packaging, cloud services and performance. Details on the new application model, device capabilities, location, sensors, and other platform capabilities will be covered.
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Building Windows Phone Applications with Silverlight, Part 2
- Peter Torr in Mandalay Ballrom A on Tuesday at 3:00 PM
Together with part 1, these sessions give an overview of the functionality for Silverlight applications that is unique to the Windows Phone application platform. Part 2 will cover the new application model, updated control templates, themes, and services available to applications, including new Windows Phone web services.
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Building Windows Phone Applications with Silverlight, Part 1
- Mike Harsh in Mandalay Ballrom A on Tuesday at 1:30 PM
Together with part 2, these sessions give an overview of the functionality for Silverlight applications that is unique to the Windows Phone application platform. Part 1 will cover new input paradigms including multi-touch, software keyboard, accelerometer and microphone, as well as the APIs to leverage phone applications like email, phone dialer, contact list and more.
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An Introduction to Developing Applications for Microsoft Silverlight
- Shawn Oster in Mandalay Ballrom A on Tuesday at 11:00 AM
New to Silverlight? This is the session for you. This session will cover: how to get started building your first application, tooling, extensibility and deployment. We’ll also highlight the capabilities of Microsoft Silverlight on the PC, as well as support for Windows Phone.
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Windows Phone UI and Design Language
- Michael Smuga, Albert Shum in Mandalay Ballrom A on Monday at 3:30 PM
Windows Phone constitutes a dramatic new user experience paradigm. This session will provide prescriptive guidance, tips, and techniques on how designers & developers can build beautiful, compelling user experiences that are consistent with the built-in Windows Phone 7 Series experiences.
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Overview of the Windows Phone 7 Series Application Platform
- Charlie Kindel in Mandalay Ballrom A on Monday at 2:00 PM
The new Windows Phone is coming! Get a high-level overview of the new application platform and a complete picture of the developer story. Learn about the developer tools, the application frameworks, the support for Silverlight, and the support for XNA.
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Designing and Developing for the Rich Mobile Web
- Joe Marini in Mandalay Ballrom A on Wednesday at 3:00 PM
The Mobile Web has been a long time in coming, and now that it’s here, it’s a force that you and your business can’t afford to ignore. What has made all of this possible is the combination of ever-more-powerful devices, fast network connections, and highly capable mobile browsers. In this session, you will learn how to build sites that work well and look great on Windows Phone and across mobile devices. We’ll cover the core mobile Web scenarios, preparing content for mobile, and tips and techniques for debugging and testing your sites.
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Building a High Performance 3D Game for Windows Phone
- Tomas Vykruta in Mandalay Ballrom A on Wednesday at 1:30 PM
This session will detail how to use XNA to develop 3D games for Windows Phone, with a special eye towards the special characteristics of Windows Phone application platform. Special attention will be placed on optimizing high-performance managed code games for the platform, to help you squeeze out every last drop of performance.
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Building Windows Phone Games
- Michael Klucher in Mandalay Ballrom A on Wednesday at 12:00 PM
With the release of Windows Phone, game developers will be able to create amazing content rapidly through the power of Silverlight and the XNA framework. This talk will outline the basic application model of Windows Phone, enumerate Windows Phone core device characteristics, and walk through highlights of Silverlight and XNA Frameworks on the phone.
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Changing our Game – an Introduction to Windows Phone 7 Series
- Joe Belfiore in Mandalay Ballrom A on Monday at 11:30 AM
Major changes are coming to Windows Phone! This session goes in-depth on the design and features of Windows Phone and gives a comprehensive picture of what’s coming in this exciting new release.
Visit.MIX
Cnet’s Ina Fried just posted a short video interview with Microsoft’s Charlie Kindel ahead of next weeks GDC & MIX. The new thing you will notice is the couple of new (demo) applications present on the start menu (those apps were probably build on Silverlight/XNA for the GDC keynotes). Charlie also does a rpid tour of the Xbox Live Hub.
Source: Cnet
The Windows Phone team just launched the new Windows Phone Developer blog just in time for GDC and MIX. The blog is now located at http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/wpdev/ and will be the place where all WP7 development related info will be posted.
This is the place. Subscribe to this feed to get deep technical information on the tools, platform capabilities, and so forth. We’ll be linking to other blogs and content sites as well. We’ll do our best to keep away from marketing spiel and instead focus on great technical conversations.
Wow, Microsoft is leaking all over the place this week. Engadget just posted é new pictures of the Tutrle and Pure handset and some more info about the release date.
According to their sources, the 2 phone will launch exclusively on Verizon with a rumored street date of April 20th and TMDP actualu means “Truly, madly, deeply“. Below you’ll see a couple of images exctracted from the device’s ROMs:
Vodafone is likely to be the international launch partner confirming what I’ve heard at MWC (Pink is launching worldwide, not only US) I still think that all the Microsoft/Danger branded stuff is just a wast of time and Money. Microsoft should ficus on Windows Phone 7 Series instead.
The Engadget boys just posted the first live pictures of Microsoft’s Courier Tablet and some details about the devices specifications and release date. From what they’ve heard the Courier will feature an nVidia Tegra 2 chipset coupled with an OS based on Windows CE 6 (like Windows Phone 7 Series, Pink & Zune HD…). The product also seems to feature dual capacitive screens (“not much bigger than a 5×7 photo when closed”) that can be used with your fingers or the digital Pen pictured above. Microsoft is also apparently builing an eBook ecosystem around it. Release date is rumored to be Q3/Q4 2010, but this is probably a little bit early. If this turns out to be true and Windows CE is at the base of the Courier OS I expect Microsoft to unify the developement tools with the Zune HD & Windows Phone 7 Series.
Source: Engadget
Microsoft’s Charlie Kindel has just posted a little blurb on what developers can expect in Windows Phone 7 Series. As expected (and leaked here in early February) the main development tools will be XNA and Silverlight (via Explression Blend):
I mentioned in my last post that one of our principles was “to build upon the shoulders of giants; where possible integrate instead of create.” It won’t come as a surprise to many to learn that the Windows Phone 7 developer experience builds upon the following GIANTS (among others):
.NET
Silverlight
XNA platform
Microsoft’s developer tools
Web 2.0 standards
The expertise and familiarity with our tools is not lost. If you are a .NET developer today your skills and much of your code will move forward. If you are Silverlight or XNA developer today you’re gonna be really happy. New developers to the platform will find a cohesive, well designed API set with super productive tools.
He also confirmed that their will be no backward compatibility with previsou and current Windows Mobile applications. You can check out his full post here
If you are not faimilair with XNA or Silverlight I suggest you go check out the offical site here & here.
The Windows Phone 7 Series Dev Team is running a Q&A session on Twitter right no. To follow it just click here or follow the #WP7DEV tag.
The boys at Gizmodo supposedly got their hands on what looks like the first live picture of a Microsoft Pink handset. As you can see it’s looks sort of like a SideKick handset (sliding-keyboard with a large screen). The device is said to be the Pure (and not the smaller Turtle). According to the tipster the device’s UI feature transitions like those found on the Zune HD and Windows Phone 7 Series OS. The actual OS powering the Pink Handsets is still a mystery though. A Job Ad I found says that the PMX team at Microsoft (the team in charge of Pink) is actually working on “Windows Mobile”:
The Premium Mobile Experiences Team will redefine the mobile phone for millions of everyday users around the world. We are looking for an intuitive and driven Visual Design Lead to push the future mobile devices forward. The successful candidate will be part of the senior leadership team driving and delivering the UI vision, UI architecture, interaction design and design for future Windows Mobile devices.
The Giz also got some Marketing material related to the Pink launch on Verizon here.
Source: Microsoft & Gizmodo
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