xbox 360 visual basic

[BadRobot]

I hear 360 uses visual basic if you are buy their 99 dollar a year devlopers kit, do i have to have a 360 to program games for it?

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

Where did you hear that? Last I heard, XNA was free, and C# only.

 

[BadRobot]

Your right, it uses c#. So wtf is up with c#. I was looking at it and is it exactly like java or just almost exactly like it?

 

[DaveSimmons]

It's a C++ / Java hybrid, designed as the java for C++ developers to move to for managed-memory programming.

Aside from java not being C++-like enough, MS needed a language for .Net that they controlled instead of Sun, so they could add .Net and other MS tech extensions as needed eg LINQ).

It's a big success, so learning it is not a bad idea. Though as I mentioned in your conole forum thread it isn't the language used for most commercial game development, that's still C/C++ unmanaged code.

 

[manko]

It's very similar to Java in a lot of ways and pretty quick to pick up.

You can download XNA and develop games for Windows and XBox 360. The paid membership allows you to sell the games on XBox Live and gives you access to more files (like game starter kits), but I think you can make free games for Windows.