And yet another programming twist

I spent the day yesterday reading about the possibility MS is going to release a managed API for DirectX10. Although that is not looking very promising (even though some inside the DirectX team state they are indeed working on it), I found out that XNA support and development seems to be on the rise. XNA is Microsoft's new API for creating games for Windows and the XBOX. The fact it includes the XBOX made me think this might not be a really good platform for a tower simulator which will run in Windows, but upon further reading, it seems that there's a lot I can benefit from this API. Several things you need for creating games, such as timers, access to graphics, audio, and input hardware, networking, etc., have been standardized and made available through XNA. It looks interesting enough that I am taking a look at it today. Oh, and what impressed me quite a bit was a short video of games made with XNA that I found in Michael Klucher's blog. Michael is one of the team members at XNA Game Studio. Time to roll my sleeves up and dig in...