Microsoft Shows Full 3D XNA Games On Windows Phone

suraj.sun writes "Microsoft has shown off XNA games running on Windows Phone; full 3D is a go. From Engadget: 'Microsoft just showed us a pair of 3D games running on its ASUS Windows Phone prototype and built with its brand new XNA Game Studio 4.0 9. The two titles are The Harvest, a good looking touch-controlled dungeon crawler with destructible environments, being developed by Luma Arcade; and Battle Punks. Microsoft spoke to the ease of its Direct3D development platform, which was built by the same folks responsible for the first-gen Xbox. What we saw of The Harvest was built in "two or three weeks," mostly from scratch, and folks who've already built games for XNA in VisualStudio shouldn't have much trouble with a port from the sound of things: "very, very easy," said Microsoft. Right now developers can do their testing in Windows, but there should be a Windows Phone 7 Series emulator out for devs eventually.'"

Comments

Is this spectacular?

[Lord Lode]

There's 3D golf, 3D snake and 3D rally on my Nokia phone...

Re:Is this spectacular?

[ZiakII]

There's 3D golf, 3D snake and 3D rally on my Nokia phone...

Can that same 3d golf, 3d snake and 3d rally for your Nokia phone be easily changed to go on a Xbox and PC easily?

Re:Is this spectacular?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes

Re:Is this spectacular?

[shutdown -p now]

I've played 3D stuff on my Nokia for a few years now as well, but it's really primitive - unfiltered textures, very few polygons before it slows down to the crawl...

XNA is a managed (.NET), higher-level layer on top of D3D which is fairly powerful, and also portable between PC, Xbox360, Zune HD, and now WinPhone. I think it's the portability that is going to be played on most here. Now, you obviously aren't going to make MW2 or Dragon Age that way, but I hear casual games are also a big market on PCs these days...

Re:Is this spectacular?

[Billly Gates]

Yes if its written in Java. ... well not the xbox

Re:Is this spectacular?

[gbjbaanb]

Selling 3d golf on the phone is one thing, trying to sell the same game on the xbox is pointless, and on the PC worthless.

Sometimes just because you can do something doesn't mean its worth doing. Look at supreme commander 2 - dumbed down so xbox users can play it, PC gamers simply told to suck it up.

Re:Is this spectacular?

[Xest]

3D on a phone isn't really the news here to be honest. It's the fact that it's done with XNA which means you can build for Windows, Zune, XBox, Windows Mobile with a negligible amount of per-platform code.

XNA like DirectX encompasses your graphics, math, audio libraries and so on so you can actually concentrate on writing the game, rather than writing code to support the creation of a game.

It's a good thing for those who just want to build games whatever the platform, because it means they get to use probably the easier professional grade development toolset yet, with a decent professional grade language, and then publish for 4 platforms from the start- 2 of which are pretty major.

The guy behind "I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1" released some stats lately stating he'd sold 200,000 copies on XBox indie games at $1 each, minus Microsoft's $30 cut (which is actually extremely reasonable as industry figures go) he's made $140,000 off a game that could be made in less than a week. With this news he can now port to Windows Mobile 7 phones.

If you just want to concentrate on writing game code, and would like to monetise that, it's probably the single best path for indies right now because you've got such a large potential userbase - Windows users (100s of millions), XBox 360 users (40mill), Windows 7 Phone users (potentially tens of millions), Zune users (all 4 of them).

I don't even think Mac/Linux users should despair either really. Indies don't generally have the resources to create a massive multi-platform game from the off, and although XNA wont port straight to these platforms it does as I say provide indie developers an awesome and easy path to market. When they achieve success, porting to other platforms becomes less of a problem for them because they've got the income and experience needed to do it if they so choose. This is somewhat what happened with Popcap- they started out with just Flash and then Windows games, but their success was such that porting the likes of Bejewelled to every other possible platform became feasible to them.

Spectacular, no. Good thing? I'd say yes, particularly for indies.

Re:Is this spectacular?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't pay attention to a lot of game news so you can imagine how excited I was when I heard Supreme Commander 2 came out. It's a good thing I read some of the reviews before buying it. I may pick it up as a $10 steam sale eventually.

Re:Is this spectacular?

[Anonymous Coward]

So this is just a kind of interface / helper interface to D3D for .Net. Great, now you're stuck to both D3D and .Net - how does that help portability?

Re:Is this spectacular?

[Lord Lode]

By the way, mind you, I wasn't saying these were actually good games... In fact I like the 2D poker game much better.

Re:Is this spectacular?

[Anonymous Coward]

never heard of I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1 before.

googled it.

was disappointed... people buy this stuff nowadays? I was rolling my own games like this back in the mid 90's and trashing them because I they didn't match up to the kind of thing I got on my snes...

Re:Is this spectacular?

[Xest]

"So this is just a kind of interface / helper interface to D3D for .Net. Great, now you're stuck to both D3D and .Net - how does that help portability?"

It's really a wrapper, but it provides more than that- the content pipeline being one example, but it also provides other useful core game classes, whilst DirectX just provides the raw APIs.

It assists portability because it's basically providing what DirectX doesn't. It basically handles the abstraction layers you'd have to otherwise right yourself for you.

It's just an extra step of game development that is now simply done for you rather than having to waste time with yourself, a step that lets you write a game once, and have it run on a console, a desktop PC, a media player, and a phone. That's how it helps portability.

I assume you're hinting at the fact that it's not portable outside Windows, but as I say, that's not something that Microsoft have any interest or would receive any benefit from investing in so why would they? Mono or similar open source projects can always deal with that side of things if they deem it worthwhile.

Re:Is this spectacular?

[Xest]

I agree, I was dissapointed too, shocked, stunned in fact. I agree it's not worthy of anything close to the money it made if I base my feelings on historic development of indie games

But that's really the point- XNA is such a great step forward for indies that even trash like that can make a small fortune. Developing, publishing and porting are so easy with it, even trash can make developers a fortune. If people want to pay for it then let them, as I say, it's great news for indies as it's a great path to easy income for them.

I think most people paid a dollar because they found the soundtrack amusing. A few other games including a terrible RC flight sim have made similar amounts though.

Re:Is this spectacular?

[SharpFang]

but that counts against XBox, not Nokia.

Re:Is this spectacular?

[SharpFang]

It costs $1. It is worth about that much. People would buy your games for that much back then too. Except there was no digital distribution to speak of back then, media costs would kill the enterprise.

Re:Is this spectacular?

[Kooty-Sentinel]

I know this might be flamebait, but.
Java SUCKS for gaming. I wish both Java and Flash would disappear from gaming completely. Neither Java or Flash (excl. Shockwave) were built for gaming. Someone needs to come up with a multi-platform gaming dev platform - and as much as I hate Microsoft, kudos for giving it a shot.

Re:Is this spectacular?

[Kooty-Sentinel]

Microsoft's TAKE on Java != Java.

Re:Is this spectacular?

[binarylarry]

Yeah, it's infinitely shittier.

Kudos to the moron who modded you insightful.

Re:Is this spectacular?

[adunstan]

I am not much of a fan of Java games, but I completely disagree with you on Flash games here; some of my favourite games to play are Flash and some of them are pretty decent, not to mention that they are usually free.

Neither Java or Flash (excl. Shockwave) were built for gaming. Someone needs to come up with a multi-platform gaming dev platform - and as much as I hate Microsoft, kudos for giving it a shot.

This first point is unneccessary, most languages that get used for games were not built for games; it's the libraries that are used to make those games that matter. On the secont point, I hate Microsoft on a lot of things too, however there are many things that I applaud them for, and XNA is one of them, although some of the pricing and execution of it seems a little crappy, I've worked on a lot of mini projects with XNA, and the library is fantastic and easy to work with. Porting your games over to your 360/Zune is simple and I am excited about beaing able to dothis to my phone too.

Re:Is this spectacular?

[Svartalf]

And there's Caster3D on the iPhone and soon other mobile platforms...other than WinMo, that is... ;-D

Re:Is this spectacular?

[LUH 3418]

>> I know this might be flamebait, but. Java SUCKS for gaming. [...]

Would you care to explain why you feel that way? As someone who's programmed in both C++ and Java, I think the main reason would be the lack of native OpenGL support in Java, but that's not necessarily a fault of the language itself. Java is actually a pretty convenient language to work with. If vendors provided proper 3D/sound APIs, it seems it would be perfectly fine to program games with.

Re:Is this spectacular?

[Svartalf]

If you've written it right with the right abstractions for key pieces of the rendering, input, sound, etc. subsystems- YES.

If you've written it right by choosing OpenGL/OpenGL ES and then the other pieces picking things like FMOD, OpenAL, Miles, etc., you'll be able to target Windows, and probably the others- 3D would be "interesting" for the XBox (you'd need an OpenGL wrapper or abstract out the 3D rendering path...) but the rest would just drop on. Keep in mind, OpenGL ES is available in hardware accelerated fashion on any WinMo device that has a GPU on it and the rest is largely taken care of by the other 3rd party middleware.

Depending on the title, it may be realistic to make the game for all platforms, but in the end, most console titles aren't practical to put onto a handheld (I mean, c'mon, Infamous on a mobile phone? Fallout3?) and most handheld titles are only peripherally realistic to make for console and desktop. The only games I know of that'd be worth going that route would be things like Caster, Cortex Command, Osmos, etc.- all of those are indie titles and most of them did it with one of the above mentioned ways of going about things. It should be noted that Caster's already on the iPhone and on it's way to other mobile platforms. Caster3D for Linux will play on most of the Linux based netbooks, and the original eeePC 701 with the latest cuts of things like Ubuntu NBR.

You can't say the same thing about the XNA route. You're stuck with just Windows, XBox 360, and when the 3D stacks propagate to the SoC's, WinMo with that route. Doing it in one of the two previously mentioned routes will ensure being able to run on the following:

Windows
MacOS
Linux X86
Linux ARM
(The following 3 are specialized versions of the above...)
Android
WebOS
MeeGo
PS3
Wii
(If you're clever, you can even target XBox 360...)

Whereas if you use XNA, you'll be able to only target:

Windows
XBox 360
WinMo

WinMo's struggling to stay relevant and this is a piece of MS trying to keep it so. Count how many WinMo devices are coming out and how many Android/MeeGo/WebOS devices are coming out or are already delivered for this season...

Re:Is this spectacular?

[Svartalf]

I believe that Oddlabs would beg to differ with you on that score.

Tribal Trouble's actually a nifty and very playable game- and it's written in Java.

Re:Is this spectacular?

[Svartalf]

Heh...

CIL != Java's VM, just for starters.

And there's the ability to make the application in .Net be pure native- something much like GCJ does for Java.

If you did a pure managed code version of a game with .Net/XNA, you'd have some of the same sorts of "fun" the Java stuff has. Keep in mind, though, you CAN make good games in Java- it's just harder and the limit ceiling on what you can/can't do is lower with it unless you build it to native with something like GCJ.

Re:Is this spectacular?

[Svartalf]

No, they can't.

I can assure you that there's patent coverage within that space that Microsoft holds ownership on.

Quickest way to see to it that you get sued over infringement, I'd say.

As it stands, having asset tool middleware isn't anything special- there's other toolchains for that available that everyone else seems to be using. I'll also note that unless you're talking a casual game or a specific range of games that would be good on a console, desktop, and handheld, you're unlikely to be concerning yourself with this sort of thing- and there's better tools that're cross platform in the way he was alluding that would do as good or better a job without being bound tightly to Microsoft.

A developer should realize that XBox isn't the only console, Windows isn't the only desktop- and there sure as hell aren't anywhere near as many WinMo devices that could ever take advantage of this. It's an attempt to show WinMo as "relevant" still- count the number of WinMo devices coming out and then contrast that with how many Android/Maemo(MeeGo?)/etc. devices are coming out with proper 3D support.

When you start adding it all up, doing XNA's limiting in ways you don't want to do unless you're explicitly targeting XBox and Windows alone with no aspirations whatsoever for other consoles or the bulk of the current smartphone space.

Re:Is this spectacular?

[binarylarry]

Actually, HotSpot is much more advanced internally than either Microsoft's or Mono's CLR implementation.

This is evidenced by the fact that HotSpot significantly outperforms them both on most independent benchmarks I've seen.

Static compilation is not a magical panache that bestows performance, in fact for most OO architectures it provides more of a hindrance than a boost.

Also, "CIL" is the intermediate language that the CLR executes, which is very, very similar to the Java bytecode executed on a JVM. Comparing CIL to a Java VM makes no sense. Also, CIL is more or less a marketing term, because if Microsoft called it ".NET bytecode that runs on the .NET virtual machine," it would be more obvious to newbies that .NET is primarily just a knockoff of Java that only runs on Microsoft platforms

Re:Is this spectacular?

[Xest]

What exactly would they hold patent ownership on that they can't exercise already?

XNA mimics what's at the core of basically any game engine written in the last decade or two. If Microsoft were interested in such patent enforcement they'd have done it against much existing middleware by now, or perhaps even OpenGL if it was API specific. Besides, there are already Mono XNA implementations underway and have been for some time, so it's quite clear people can in fact produce FOSS implementations of XNA if they so choose.

You're right that the XBox isn't the only console, but it is the only console that people can publish for without having to be a professional development studio. No other modern console has a path that allows indies to publish to the console's userbase so it's the sensible choice for indies right now. You could write a game and submit it to XNA tommorrow if you so chose to- with the PS3 or Wii it would take months to even barter the relevant SDKs and dev kits required out of Sony and Nintendo before you could even start developing, and that's assuming you could manage to get it out of them at all.

Regarding Windows mobile penetration, that's a really horribly poor argument. TFA is referring to Windows Mobile 7 which isn't even released yet, and is Microsoft's attempt at getting back on the ball in the smartphone marketplace. They were the second biggest player previously after Symbian but they let their position slip by ignoring development of the platform, there's no reason Windows Mobile couldn't reach that position again. XNA doesn't even work on the current platform, so arguing that the poor penetration of current Windows Mobile which is inferior to all other offerings out there shows complete ignorance of the market and where XNA4 comes in- you can't make claims about the potential penetration of something that's not even out there yet.

Re:Is this spectacular?

[Anonymous Coward]

how does that help portability

what, besides being able to run on 90%+ of desktops, 1/3 consoles, and whatever % of mobile phones?

what's the alternative, Obj-C? LOL!

Re:Is this spectacular?

[Ihmhi]

Man, just think of the possibilities.

You can make a lot of fun, low power games. I imagine I could play a game on my phone, and then when I get home I could sync it up to a console or computer and continue where I left off when I was out and about.

Re:Is this spectacular?

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, just think of the possibilities.

You can make a lot of fun, low power games. I imagine I could play a game on my phone, and then when I get home I could sync it up to a console or computer and continue where I left off when I was out and about.

Is Microsoft paying you for this, or is this just free astoturfing?

Re:Is this spectacular?

[tecnico.hitos]

Flash is not very efficient resource-wise, but it is easy to deal with, making dealing with movement, transitions, collision detections and 2D visual effects very simple. Also, I have yet to see a tool as practical for animation as Flash.

Flash is not the scourge of the internet. It is just misused sometimes.

Re:Is this spectacular?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, huh...yep. And the guy had a book published about how he did it, too.

I'm sorry, what have you done since the mid-ninties? Hmmm? What? I can't hear you... ...Or your game.

HTC HD2 forget it

[Anonymous Coward]

I was going to get the HTC HD2 but knowing that it isn't getting the windows phone upgrade I know I'm going to be missing out on these games coming out that might be shovelware. I don't know if I should get a nexus one now and be locked in for 2 years or wait until fall to see what comes out. I know something better will always come along but the new smartphones require a dataplan, so it is a much larger investment than $200.

how about some battery?

[Nyder]

I don't want gaming on my cell phone.

Sure,I can game on my phone, but I don't. The battery honestly just can't take it. I like to have my phone do the phone stuff, I like that I can check the internet if I need to. What I don't like is having to recharge my phone every 4-6 hours because gaming/video's drain the battery.

When you (as in the clever people adding all this extra crap to phones) can actually make a battery that can handle all that stuff, then I'll be down to game on my cell phone.

Till then, I just carry my dingoo around also. (for those that don't know, dingoo a320 is a portable emulator about the size of the bottom of a DS.)

I understand the need to have a "all in one" device, but until the battery life problem gets solved, we won't get there. (of course, not standing any new tech like reduces the power of such devices)

Re:how about some battery?

[dunkelfalke]

That's why I've got a spare battery for my phone.

In 6 Months

[bedouin]

MS Begins Selling Full 3D XNA Games; No One Notices.

Re:In 6 Months

[mestar]

http://translationparty.com/#6847229

MS Begins Selling Full 3D XNA Games; No One Notices

MS started selling the game a full 3D document; No one notices one
MS is a complete 3D documentation, start selling the game; no one notices one
MS is a complete 3D documentation, will start selling the game, no one notices one
MS is a complete 3D documentation, sales of the game, everyone will begin notify one
MS is a complete 3D documentation, sales of the game, everyone begins to notice a single one
MS is a complete 3D documentation, sales of the game, everyone started to notice one by one

Mac/Linux users - Possible ports.

[DrYak]

I don't even think Mac/Linux users should despair either really.

Well, given that XNA is basically .NET with DirectX bindings (and a few other libraries), someone should sequestrate Miguel de Icaza and punch him repeatedly in the face until he accepts to port XNA on his Mono in exchange of his liberation. In fact, given how wilfully he ported Silverlight into Moonlight, we might even skip the whole punching steps and let him do the port on his own.

More seriously :
- Mono is already a functional cross-platform .NET CLR/DLR implementation
- Silverlight is already an example of some domain specific .NET implementation (Silverlight) ported to Mono
- In case of DirectX calls being directly exposed in XNA, Wine project has already some DirectX to OpenGL/Pulse/et alii wrappers (lots of games are currently playable on Macs and Linux through Wine or Crossover)
- The biggest chunk for making a Mac/Linux XNA port would be adapting the XNA specific classes to Mono

This might indeed work :
- There are already efforts in that direction (which has already been successfully adapted on one Indie Project)
- I would definitely see a couple of "Google Summer of Code"-worthy projects to implement a few of the basics of this latest Windows Mobile-compatible XNA version.
- Cross-platfrom Mono/XNA means instant support on all opensource-friendly platforms: Android, Maemo, webOS, Beagleboard/OpenPandora/TouchBook, (OpenMoko :-P)
- That means that there could be also interest from the phone industry (specially the huge Android clan, but Palm has also shown interests efforts towards cross-platform development with their PDK)
- That means industry-backed salaries could be used for such a port making it an easier effort.

Though, regarding Apple support, don't expect it to run on anything but jail-broken iPhone/iPod/iPad, just like with Flash. Apple doesn't want you to run anything which was not approved by Steve-God-Himself before ending up on the AppStore.

Re:Mac/Linux users - Possible ports.

[Anonymous Coward]

Advocating a wrapper that only results in performance problems for a performance-dependent application is a terrible, TERRIBLE idea, for both the developer and the customer.

Re:Mac/Linux users - Possible ports.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Because after all, games like "I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1" are extremely demanding and need all the resources it can get to even run smoothly.

Re:Mac/Linux users - Possible ports.

[Cyberax]

There's MonoXNA ( http://code.google.com/p/monoxna/ ) already. But it's nowhere close to complete or even usable state.

My rough guesstimate gives about 30 man-years to produce a near-complete XNA implementation.

Re:Mac/Linux users - Possible ports.

[Anonymous Coward]

You might have a point in theory. In practice however games run faster under Wine then under Windows. The underlying platform seems to be a bigger roadblock to performance then the wrapper/api.

Re:Mac/Linux users - Possible ports.

[binarylarry]

It's like every Mono project, half done, incompatible, doesn't really work.

Mono is the new Wine. (and that analogy goes deeper than you might think)

Re:Mac/Linux users - Possible ports.

[Svartalf]

Considering that you're not talking about a wrapper, per se, but rather an API layer that's similar enough to the Windows one that you can just drop an application on and run it.

Nice idea, but there's a minefield that won't get fixed unless the SCOTUS deep-sixes most software patents. You're going to touch on something that will most definitely infringe on one of MS' patents doing this sufficient to play games with. As such, it's kind of worthless to go there.

Windows On Mobiles - Yet To Be Convinced

[pandrijeczko]

I'm all for giving Microsoft a chance with Windows Mobile 7 (or whatever they're calling it) but as someone who has used phones & gadgets running Android, Symbian & Apple embedded OSes, as well as various incarnations of Windows Mobile on HTC and iPAQ devices, I just don't believe Windows is a suitable OS for embedded devices. The rest "just work", Windows devices need rebooting once a month or so, they sometimes slow to a crawl occasionally for no readily apparent reason & there always deployed far too bloated with no easy way of removing the trash you don't need.

On a slightly related topic, I've been a Linux and Windows guy for some years now and having just got hold of a HTC Hero phone (running Android), I've now finally been able to ditch MS ActiveSync and Outlook to the point where my desktop of choice can now be (Gentoo) Linux with the ability to run the same apps (Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird, OpenOffice.org, GIMP, etc.) equally well on Linux or XP - if Microsoft is serious about Windows Mobile then they have to stop tying users up to their own desktop OS and products just because they use a Windows-based mobile phone.

Re:Windows On Mobiles - Yet To Be Convinced

[ferrgle]

Since I have moved from Windows to Android on my HTC it has been great. I finally have a phone that does what I want it to do.

Re:Windows On Mobiles - Yet To Be Convinced

[dunkelfalke]

just works?

Re:Windows On Mobiles - Yet To Be Convinced

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny when you consider what it took for Microsoft to make XNA, DirectX & Visual Basic support other platforms:

Microsoft had to internally develop those other platforms.

Re:Windows On Mobiles - Yet To Be Convinced

[yanko22]

I just don't believe Windows is a suitable OS for embedded devices.

I'm all for bashing Microsoft for its numerous failings, but we are talking about a mobile OS, completely rebuilt from the ground up, which is yet to be released. It completely breaks backward compatibility, has a completely new programming model and APIs (as far as Windows Mobile is concerned) and imposes strict requirements on the hardware, in stark contrast with past WM versions. In this case, any previous experience we've had with Windows Mobile is irrelevant, with the only possible exception being Zune, as it's said that WM7 borrows parts of the UI (or maybe much more than just the UI?) from it.

In the end, you may turn out to be right, but until we've had the chance to play with it, such dismissals on general grounds seem unjustified.

Re:Windows On Mobiles - Yet To Be Convinced

[Dexy]

I'm all for giving Microsoft a chance with Windows Mobile 7 (or whatever they're calling it) but as someone who has used phones & gadgets running Android, Symbian & Apple embedded OSes, as well as various incarnations of Windows Mobile on HTC and iPAQ devices, I just don't believe Windows is a suitable OS for embedded devices. The rest "just work", Windows devices need rebooting once a month or so, they sometimes slow to a crawl occasionally for no readily apparent reason & there always deployed far too bloated with no easy way of removing the trash you don't need.

Have you actually read anything about 7 Series? It's a complete reincarnation of WinMo.

Of course, whether it needs regular reboots or random slowdowns or not still remains to be seen. But MS seem to be going more towards the Apple route of locking down the core OS - this would be stupid if the fundamentals of the OS were crap.

Re:Windows On Mobiles - Yet To Be Convinced

[gad_zuki!]

>I just don't believe Windows is a suitable OS for embedded devices.

Err, "Windows" is a trademark. The code on your Win7 machine is not the code on your mobile phone.

>The rest "just work",

As someone who has spent years using palm, then danger/hiptop, then winmo, and now iphone, I can tell you that none of these "just work." You just have a double standard because youre biased.

While Im certainly not one to defend WinMo, my previous phone was a Treo with WinMo that did a lot of the things 5 years ago that people rave about with iphone/android. WinMo didnt have an app store, but apps were easily found on the internet. Many free and without the blessing of any censorship board. Not to mention, Outlook/Activesync integration.

Re:Windows On Mobiles - Yet To Be Convinced

[Svartalf]

The "embedded" OS that they slapped their trademark on is rather not suitable for a large line of embedded tasks. Same goes for Embedded XP, etc. It's only sort-of useful on PDA's and somewhat painful at times on mobile phones. And, before you remark, I should point out that I do embedded development for a living.

I would have to concur with your assertion of "bias" on the GP poster's part, but I would say that the current crop of Maemo, Android, etc. phones do seem to work more along expected lines and seem to better match "just work" than most. The same could probably be said for the iPhone, but it's got it's own set of issues too.

As for "Outlook/Activesync integration", that may be a good thing for you, but for myself and a lot of other people, that's a negativ, not a positive- not that I think that any of the Android phones don't have conduits for that support, mind. It's also worth mentioning that there's an App Store for the Android, but it doesn't have a censorship board like the iPhone seems to have.

In the end, each is going to have their own opinions on this subject- and your ideas aren't going to mesh up with mine or most anyone else's on it.

Re:Windows On Mobiles - Yet To Be Convinced

[drinkypoo]

Depending on how much of XP/embedded you include, you can run full-fledged XP desktop apps on it. How is XP/embedded not workable for mobiles with 600 MHz processors and the like?

Re:Windows On Mobiles - Yet To Be Convinced

[diegocg]

Windows Phone 7 will break compatibility with software written for previous versions of Windows Mobile. That's a very interesting fact that Microsoft has tried very hard to hide, but it's very important if you are willing to give it an opportunity.

Re:Windows On Mobiles - Yet To Be Convinced

[Svartalf]

And how is this useful for the large bulk of embedded applications?

C'mon- most people aren't going to be using Office on their Heart monitor or the traffic light controller. (Or, for that matter, your fly-by-wire avionics or drive-by-wire automotive controls!!)

Re:Windows On Mobiles - Yet To Be Convinced

[darrenkopp]

you may want to look into what windows phone 7 series is, because it's not anything close to what you think it is.

Re:Windows On Mobiles - Yet To Be Convinced

[drinkypoo]

And how is this useful for the large bulk of embedded applications?

You can also have as little of XP as you like, and you get to use Microsoft development tools, with which many thousands of programmers are comfortable. This means it's easy to find competent programmers in the first place, and it's easy to find people to maintain the code later, provided it's actually maintainable. Since it's XP you can use practically any hardware, and you can change it out later without anyone the wiser if you're clever about enclosure design and somewhat of a prognosticator regarding the direction the market will go with competing case design standards. :)

XP is a well-known and competent platform as long as you don't get carried away with exposing it to the world. I would personally prefer Linux with OpenGL ES as a platform for producing consumer devices with a display. For anything that doesn't need a display, both that and XP embedded are probably utter overkill.

Re:Windows On Mobiles - Yet To Be Convinced

[shutdown -p now]

That's a very interesting fact that Microsoft has tried very hard to hide

Pretty much every single story on WinPhohe7 mentioned that there will be no backwards compatibility. The announcement on the blog of the project's PM said so explicitly as well. Your definition of "tries very hard to hide" is rather curious...

Re:Windows On Mobiles - Yet To Be Convinced

[Anonymous Coward]

The rest "just work", Windows devices need rebooting once a month or so

While I agree with your gripes about vendor bloatware (I've run my own ROMs on my past two Windows Mobile phones), I have to chuckle at this. My wife's Motorola Cliq had to be reset several times per day due to freezing and other bizarre bugs. After visiting the T-Mobile forums and seeing that a huge number of Cliq users had identical problems, we ended up sending the POS back to T-Mobile. Both of my Blackberries (Curve, Pearl) and my wife's Current phone, the Curve, had/have to be hard reset at least a couple of times per week.

Re:Windows On Mobiles - Yet To Be Convinced

[Anonymous Coward]

I finally have a phone that does what I want it to do.

Can you give an example of something you *couldn't* do with Windows?

Performance: Not an API issue.

[DrYak]

Advocating a wrapper that only results in performance problems for a performance-dependent application is a terrible, TERRIBLE idea

Well if the calls themselves were the most time-critical part, you would be right. The fact is that the most critical part is the rendering it self. Which is done on the graphic card or - to be more precise regarding today's subject - on the embed PowerVR of the Phone's OMAP.

Older phone had slow 3D because it was partly done in software. Modern embed platforms contain embed 3D Chips, so the performances are mostly hardware dependent. And given the pervasiveness of OMAPs and similar chips, there are only small difference between generations to consider.

Although the arrival of Tegra chips (with a different 3D core from nVidia) might disturb the monotone landscape. But given the target market and core maker, I suspect that Tegra will have more than enough guts to run Phone-targeting games.

Re:Performance: Not an API issue.

[Svartalf]

The landscape's a bit more varied than that...

You've got PowerVR, Tegra, Imageon (whatever Qualcomm's calling it now...), and Mali, all of which are very credible GPUs for mobile 3D support, all of which have SoC's in play or about to be with them in there. The one thing common to all of them? They're all using OpenGL ES right now.

true 3d game on phone....wating...

[Davidavid]

now d3d on mobile phone, phone 3d game future. care performance.

Doesn't add up.

[SharpFang]

he'd sold 200,000 copies on XBox indie games at $1 each, minus Microsoft's $30 cut (which is actually extremely reasonable as industry figures go) he's made $140,000 off a game that could be made in less than a week.

Either you'd made a typo there or I don't get something. Could you explain these figures? It doesn't add up for me. Is he selling for $31, MS taking $30, him $1? Or did you mean 30%?

Re:Doesn't add up.

[Xest]

Sorry, I meant 30%, that was a typo!

He sold 200,000 copies at $1 each, Microsoft took $60,000 of that $200,000 leaving him $140,000. Hope that makes more sense!

Re:Doesn't add up.

[Anonymous Coward]

So Microsoft got 30% (0.3) on each sell.

Re:Comparing frameworks or platforms?

[b4dc0d3r]

It's true. Java is a language and a platform, .NET is a platform. In a lot of ways, .NET took the idea of Java and addressed some complaints, resulting in a better Java. No citation there, that's just opinion I see from time to time.

Java has an awful lot of segmentation due to all of the 3rd party stuff that was later integrated into Java, so multiple ways to do the same thing. .NET has a huge library and multiple ways to do the same thing, but it's all in the library - nothing external. So if you see some .NET code, you can bring it in (usually regardless of the language) and use it. Java has things like NetBeans running atop Swing - and NetBeans is both a platform and an IDE for other languages. Basically it was pieced together over 15 years, and it shows.

The biggest black eye in the face of Java is all of the complaints about performance. It's not inherently slow, but the underlying runtime allowed developers to do things like repeated string concatenation instead of using string builder, making the app way more sluggish than it needed to be. You can be an idiot in .NET, but they made things more efficient from the start, just as Java has improved performance. You can still be an idiot in Java, but it's harder now.

XNA is intended to be a gaming platform, whereas Java was intended to be general-purpose. I believe that makes Kooty-Sentinel (1291050) at least partly correct. XNA is one of those add-ons like NetBeans, so arguing about .NET vs. Java is kinda retarded.

There are Java-based gaming frameworks - many, in fact. so if you want to have a flame war, it should be XNA against [jMonkeyEngine | Jogre | Lightweight Java Game Library ], I'm sure there are others as well.

Did I mention Java is heavily segmented?

On the negative side...

[Hurricane78]

...the phone still runs Windows. ;)

If I ever buy such a phone (again), please shoot me. Thanks.

Re:On the negative side...

[keeboo]

...the phone still runs Windows. ;)

If I ever buy such a phone (again), please shoot me. Thanks.

If you think WinMo is that horrible... You didn't use Windows CE 1.0.