With the Game Developer Conference (GDC) coming up this week, you can expect lots of announcements.   We kick start the process by issuing a press release featuring developer tools that are part of our XNA Framework: XNA Studio and Xbox Live Services. 

XNA Framework is an implementation of the .NET Framework, and has game-development-specific libraries so game developers can more easily create cross-platform games on Windows and Xbox 360 using C#.

XNA Studio is a set of tools and technologies to help streamline and optimize the game development process. We'll be issuing a pre-release DVD with a "Community Technology Preview" version of XNA Studio so developers can take a look.  If you're going to miss GDC, you can check out the Web version online.  You can also check out the XNA forums on msdn.com.

The Xbox Live Services Platform will let developers create their own back-end servers to run alongside Xbox Live, so they can easily add Live features unique to their games.  Burnout: Revenge does a great job with this with their "Save and Share" feature, where you can post video clips of game play for your friends. 

Check out the XNA Studio Fact Sheet, or read the press release.