XNA Essentials

Gamefest 2007 - Day 1 was great!  Highlights of some of the things announced today are as follows:

1. XNA Game Studio 2.0 is the only sku (no longer Express and never will be a Pro).
2. XNA Game Studio 2.0 sits on top of all Visual Studio skus (Visual C# Express, VS 2005, etc)
3. XNA Game Studio 2.0 will support networking via Xbox Live.  Certain things will not be available like Acheivements, Leaderboards and Matchmaking.  However, being able to network the Xbox 360 and Windows together in the same game is amazing.  Also, being able to easily setup code to either run a system link network game or over Xbox Live (and of course local multiplayer) is excellent.
4. XNA Game Studio 2.0 includes Gamer Services (Gamer tags, gamer card, game defaults, privledges, etc)

Day 1 was great.  The top 20 of the Dream Build Play entries were absolutely awesome!  The XNA Framework simply rocks.  Go write great games!