Is it possible to write a commercial XBOX game using Visual Studio and MS XNA Game Studio SDK?

Question

I know most commercial games development is done in assembly or C/C++ but has anyone tried using XNA with VS 2008 to create a real time intensive application that would be fit for release in the high street as oppose to just on XBOX Live. What are the limitations you encountered and what sort of frame rates were you getting and in what resolution?

Obviously you could use it to write something like Championship Manager/Rock Band etc but could you use it to develop a game like Pro Evo?

I suspect I know the answer already but I would love to hear from other peoples experiences with XNA and Visual Studio 2008.

Answer 1

XNA as a technology is certainly capable of delivering performant applications. In some circumstances, such as absolute bleeding edge games, I think it's fair to say that the performance of XNA hasn't been tested.

The larger issue is one of licensing. Microsoft is currently not pushing XNA as a framework for development of professional XBox applications and has targeted it more towards community development. There isn't currently a "professional" targeted XNA platform, and to my knowledge there isn't a retail SKU using XNA.