Which version of Visual Studio do I use to develop Xbox 360 Indie Games with XNA? (App Hub)

Question

I already had C# Express 2010 since I've worked with Windows Forms some, but I wanted to started messing around with games for 360. When I went here to download the free tool kit including XNA: http://create.msdn.com/en-us/home/getting_started the install came with Visual Studio C# Express 2010 for Windows Phone 7. They seem to be labeling everything Windows Phone 7 and ignoring 360 so do I use standard Visual Studio C# Express or the Windows Phone version, and what's the difference (if any)?

I really don't have any interest in Windows Phone 7 currently and I find it irritating how it's all they're pushing.

EDIT: Removed what my friend said since he now says he's not sure. :)

Answer 1

Windows Phone 7 actually supports XNA, hence the cross-referencing everywhere

I believe what you want is XNA Game Studio 4:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9ac86eca-206f-4274-97f2-ef6c8b1f478f

this should give you all the tools and SDK needed to develop for XBox360. I think you will be able to edit the projects in the game studio and any version of VS that you have.

Answer 2

XNA 4 can be used to write code for Xbox, Windows and Windows Phone. The standalone install comes with VS 2010 Express, but if you already have a better version of VS installed XNA will use that. I have XNA 4 installed for VS 2010 Ultimate.

Answer 3

If it says it works for WP7, it works for PC and X360 as well. They always make it easy to copy your VS projects for one of the other platforms (or just change it in the properties and use precompiler for having a single proejct).

Also, when you sign up to sell on the indie games marketplace, you can sell on the WP7 marketplace as well. If your game can be easily played on a touchscreen, you might want to think about selling it for that as well (from my experience, it is hard to make a profit on indie games).

Answer 4

As other have said, if you had the standard edition, the XNA and Phone extensions would be added to the same VS instance (if you are a student you can get the full version for free at DreamSpark)

You, however, have the express editions, and yeah it installs a special phone edition. I cant remember by heart but I'm pretty sure that the Phone Edition will only let you do phone development (it includes the emulator), while the other XNA C# express will include the Games templates (and the tooling to export/deploy to the xbox).

XNA itself could be run in either and if you separate your code into a library then you could re use it in several platforms, however as far as the tooling/IDE concerns with express versions, you have to use the Phone for phone development and the other one for game development.