Time for action – installing XNA Game Studio

  1. Visit http://create.msdn.com/en-us/home/getting_started, and download the latest version of the Windows Phone SDK package. Run the setup wizard and allow the installation package to complete.
  2. Open Visual Studio 2010 Express. Click on the Help menu and select Register Product. Click on the Register Now link to go to the Visual Studio Express registration page. After you have completed the registration process, return to Visual Studio 2010 Express and enter the registration number into the registration dialog box.
  3. Close Visual Studio 2010 Express.
  4. Launch Visual Studio 2010 Express, and the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) will be displayed, as shown in the following screenshot:
    Time for action – installing XNA Game Studio

Tip

Other versions of Visual Studio and XNA

Different versions of Visual Studio and XNA can be installed on the same PC, without interfering with each other. If you wish to target the Zune platform, you will need to install Visual Studio 2008 Express and XNA 3.1 (which only supports the C# language). Additionally, Visual Studio Express and Visual Studio Professional can co-exist on the same PC, and XNA will integrate with both of them, if the Windows Phone SDK is installed after Visual Studio.

What just happened?

You have now successfully installed the Windows Phone SDK, which includes Visual Studio 2010 Express, the XNA Extensions for Visual Studio, and the re-distributable Font Pack provided by Microsoft for XNA developers.