An interesting piece of news regarding mobile gaming that has recently emerged stems from a Microsoft XNA chief Chris Satchell recent interview. He has given some hints as to the future of the XNA platform. Asked what was next for the XNA framework, given that the recently-announced Xbox Live Community Games distribution system is the last major piece of the XNA initiative to fall into place, Satchell said: "Well, we're extending to Zune this year, beyond that, I think there are other platforms we could extend to such as, for example, smartphones." Given Apple's committing to gaming on mobile devices yesterday, such a move would be an effective counter strike from Microsoft to promote its own Windows Mobile smartphone platform.
He also says that his team 'isn't focused on business model' and that he wants to enable community-created games first. Also touched upon in the interview is whether users will have to pay to play Xbox Live Community Games, to which Satchell responded: "We haven't decided that yet. To be honest, we're not really focused on the business model, we've been focusing on this pipeline and connecting people. Once we're in beta more will come to light. For now, it's just getting this distribution to work - it's a hell of a lot of work!"
You can check both parts of this interesting interview below, if you can read between the lines you can definitely see some of the future directions Microsoft plans to take regarding XBox, mobile gaming and game development in general.
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