More info on WP7 Marketplace, Gaming and Development revealed

Yesterday at IndyTechFest, William Steele of Microsoft held a session on "Building Applications on Windows Phone seven with XNA" which was recorded on UStream for all to watch.

While geared for developers, at that place were a few nuggets of information made available that many of you may detect interesting. And one time again, we'll save you the hr with a summary of the new data:

Development

Regarding orientation, Silverlight is portrait by default; XNA is mural, though of course they can be altered
XNA games are limited to 30 FPS, just that'due south too the limit on the concrete screen's refresh rate
Only Silverlight can use on-screen keyboard; not yet available for XNA simply you can write your own custom keyboard in XNA
Games built on XNA 4.0 will NOT run on the Zune (there's a "real reason" and one they're telling u.s.a. publicly. Hmmm...)
Silverlight app shows up in the Apps Menu; XNA apps shows up in the Games Bill of fare or some special hub
XNA is obviously geared towards gaming; Silverlight is "user upshot driven", merely both can basically do the same things

Marketplace

For ownership software, Windows Phone Marketplace will be in dollars; Xbox Market place volition be Points ("funny money")
Two divide markets (Xbox and Windows Phone Market), meaning yous'll have to buy the aforementioned game/different platform twice, no way to link (?)
"Featured" area of Marketplace = paid promotion of awarding past developer
Trial-ware volition provide link to purchase, pause game, hop to marketplace to buy and then go on game (like Xbox)
No in-game purchasing yet (e.g. bonus levels, avatars, etc.), simply definitely something they are looking at

Some revealing tidbits there.

Nosotros're not at all thrilled with the purported fragmentation of the Market between Xbox and Windows Phone. While developers volition but accept to write the software one time for PC, Xbox and Phone (the first two go to ane marketplace, the latter to some other) there seems to be no mode to connect purchases for the consumer. That seems like a bad idea. It'due south also baffling equally to how you lot can't purchase the two together but they can interact across platforms (we suppose it has to do with the courage "cloud services"). We suggest ane solution would be for developers to offer "redemption codes" to consumer who buy on i platform, to "purchase" on the other. That system already exists on Xbox, though it could be a hassle.

We also now have confirmation that the Zune HD appears to be locked out of all of future evolution, despite existence able to run XNA second (and unofficially 3D with some tricks). Patently Microsoft has a real reason, which they are not telling the public--nosotros speculate that it'south because the Zune hardware has an expiration date.

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