Why can't you develop XNA games in VB.Net?

Question

I know there's no VB.Net project type for the XNA games but as a simple test, I threw together a VB Solution which references Microsoft.XNA.*. It has a class which implements Microsoft.XNA.Framework.Game. Then in the C# Game1.cs, I simply removed all the boilerplate code and modified it to inherit from my VB class...

namespace MyGame {
    public class Game1 : GameEngine.Engine {
    }
}

Which is inheriting...

Public Class Engine
    Inherits Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game

    Protected Overrides Sub Update(GameTime As Microsoft.Xna.Framework.GameTime)
        If GamePad.GetState(PlayerIndex.One).Buttons.Back = ButtonState.Pressed Then
            Me.Exit()
        End If

        For Each Element In Elements
            Element.Update(GameTime)
        Next

        MyBase.Update(GameTime)
    End Sub

   ...

This seems to work and I've been able to load content, render a model, take gamepad input, etc...

So what I'm asking is... Is there really a restriction due to some advanced features not supported in VB.Net or is it merely that no project templates/support are available?

Is there some performance optimisation when compiling to MSIL that the VB compiler misses?

Answer 1

VB.NET and C# both compile to the same MSIL at a semantic level, so it's not a technical limitation. As you've seen, it's not too difficult to hack together a VB.NET app that accesses XNA.

The restriction is simply because examples have to be written in a particular language by a person, and most professional game developers will be coming from a C++ background. It's a human resource limitation - they can only write so much sample code.

There are also some performance differences between C# and VB.NET, which may have contributed to Microsoft's decision.

Update: It also turns out that VB.NET doesn't support unsafe code. You'll often find cases where unsafe code is necessary in games programming, for performance reasons. I have a feeling that Microsoft's decision was made based on a compound list of reasons.