Microsoft has confirmed that it does not plan to release future versions of the XNA development toolset.
A blog post from developer Promit Roy earlier this week apparently detailed Microsoft's plans to fully retire the XNA Game Studio tools on April 1, 2014, while also suggesting that the future of API collection DirectX is uncertain.
The company has now further explained the situation to Polygon, assuring developers that DirectX development will continue, but stating that XNA has received its last update.
"XNA Game Studio remains a supported toolset for developing games for Xbox 360, Windows and Windows Phone," said the representative. "Many developers have found financial success creating Xbox LIVE Indie Games using XNA. However, there are no plans for future versions of the XNA product."
Numerous developers took to Twitter to mourn the death of the platform -- or otherwise. Unity CEO David Helgason in particular tweeted, "Farewell XNA, you were never quite the worthy opponent I expected, though you hit some high notes along the way."
He later added, "XNA was originally announced GDC 2005, just 3 months before Unity 1.0. I remember being quite worried at competing with all of Microsoft's might (remember, they really mattered back then). However they never really loved their own platform, and this closure isn't really a surprise if you followed them closely (like I did)"
"Microsoft have essentially turned their backs on 10,000 developers on one of the most promising gaming APIs available today," said Dominique Louis of MonoGame, the Open Source implementation of the XNA Framework.
"Everyone knew it was coming," they added, "but were secretly hoping that Microsoft were going to spring a surprise XNA 5 on them. Essentially, with no movement on XNA for more than a year and the key Microsoft developers moving on to other projects, it was wishful thinking to expect anything but this."
It's official: XNA is dead
Microsoft has confirmed that it does not plan to release future versions of the XNA development toolset, although thanks to the open source MonoGame, developers won't be left out in the cold.