• Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) is supported, but is not required, for XNA Game Studio.
• Windows XP requires Service Pack 2 or later.
• Although XNA Game Studio itself is available only in English, it is supported under any of the available language settings on Windows.
• Administrator permissions are not required to run XNA Game Studio. However, Administrator permissions (administrative elevation on Windows Vista) are required to install XNA Game Studio.
• Although the setup program for XNA Game Studio will complete on the Windows 2003 Server and Windows 2008 Server operating systems, XNA Game Studio is not officially supported on these operating systems, and the XNA Game Studio software may not work as expected.

To run XNA Framework games on Windows, you need a graphics card that supports Shader Model 1.1 or greater and DirectX 9.0c. We recommend that you use a graphics card that supports Shader Model 2.0 because some samples and starter kits may require it.

Make sure that your graphics card is using the most recent drivers by checking with your hardware vendor and by accessing Microsoft Update.

Other hardware requirements for XNA Game Studio are identical to those for Visual Studio 2008. For more information, see the Visual Studio documentation.

XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Beta) requires that you install the .NET Framework 3.5.

The Setup program for Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 installs the .NET Framework 3.5 if it is not already installed on your computer. You can also install the .NET Framework from the Microsoft .NET Framework Developer Center.

XNA Game Studio 3.0 Setup installs the DirectX runtime, which is required to use the XNA Framework game API.

XNA Game Studio 3.0 Setup installs the Microsoft Cross-Platform Audio Creation Tool (XACT) from the August 2007 DirectX Software Development Kit (SDK). XACT enables you to author audio content for your game. XNA Game Studio 3.0 Setup installs a version of XACT that is compatible with the XNA Game Studio 3.0 product. XNA Game Studio 3.0 may not work with content authored using other versions of XACT.

Before installing XNA Game Studio, close any running instances of Visual C# 2008 Express Edition or other supported Visual Studio 2008 products such as Visual Studio 2008 Professional.

If you choose to uninstall Visual Studio 2008, you must first uninstall XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Beta). XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Beta) will not uninstall properly if Visual Studio 2008 is not currently installed.

Do not uninstall the XNA Framework or XNA Game Studio Platform Tools unless you are also uninstalling XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Beta). Although the XNA Framework and XNA Game Studio Platform Tools are separate components from XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Beta) itself, XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Beta) relies on these components and will not function correctly if they are uninstalled.

After you install XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Beta), a copy of the DirectX redistributable files will exist in this location.

C:\Program Files\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\3.0\Redist\DX Redist

These are temporary files used by Setup, and are not supported for direct use by developers. Uninstalling XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Beta) will uninstall these temporary files.

Setup may return one of the following error codes if an issue occurs during installation. If you are using a script to install XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Beta), you should check for these error codes.

You will need to manually upgrade projects that were created with XNA Game Studio 3.0 CTP in order to use them with XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Beta). The upgrade wizard for XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Beta) upgrades only XNA Game Studio 2.0 projects. To manually upgrade a project created in XNA Game Studio 3.0 CTP, use the following procedure.

1. Open the <projectname>.csproj file in a text editor, such as Notepad.

2. Scroll down to the bottom of the .csproj file and locate the following three <Import.../> elements.

               <Import Project="$(MSBuildBinPath)\Microsoft.CSharp.targets" />
               <Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Microsoft\XNA Game Studio\v3.0\Microsoft.Xna.GameStudio.Common.targets" />
               <Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Microsoft\XNA Game Studio\v3.0\Microsoft.Xna.GameStudio.NestedContent.targets" />
             

   Replace these with the following two <Import.../> elements. Note that the first element is the same.

               <Import Project="$(MSBuildBinPath)\Microsoft.CSharp.targets" />
               <Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Microsoft\XNA Game Studio\Microsoft.Xna.GameStudio.targets" />
             

3. Save the .csproj file.

4. Open <projectname>.csproj in Visual C# 2008 Express Edition or Visual Studio 2008 to use it with the XNA Game Studio 3.0 beta.

Game projects that were created using the XNA Game Studio 2.0 (Beta) may produce the following error when built using XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Beta). Specifically, this occurs if the project was originally created using the XNA Game Studio 2.0 (Beta), then was converted using the XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Beta), and then a copy of the existing project was created for the Zune platform.

The error is caused by a subtle configuration issue in the .contentproj file created by XNA Game Studio 2.0 (Beta). To correct this issue, use the following procedure.

1. Modify the .contentproj file to delete all instances of the OutputPath element. This element usually is within a PropertyGroup element that has Condition attributes. For example:

   <PropertyGroup Condition=" '$(Configuration)|$(Platform)' == 'Debug|Xbox 360' ">
     ...
     <OutputPath>bin\Xbox 360\Debug</OutputPath>
   </PropertyGroup>
                     

2. Add the following as a child element in the same PropertyGroup that includes the XnaFrameworkVersion element:

   <OutputPath>bin\$(Platform)\$(Configuration)</OutputPath>

Use one of the following procedures to upgrade a game project from XNA Game Studio Express to XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Beta).

• Create a new XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Beta) project, and then add the code and content from the XNA Game Studio Express project to the XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Beta) project.

• Use the standalone upgrade wizard for XNA Game Studio 2.0 to upgrade the project from XNA Game Studio Express to XNA Game Studio 2.0, and then use the built-in upgrade wizard for XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Beta) to upgrade the project to XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Beta). You will need XNA Game Studio 2.0 in order to use the standalone upgrade wizard. You can obtain the XNA Game Studio 2.0 and the standalone upgrade wizard at the following URLs.

  Download	Location
  XNA Game Studio 2.0	http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=127875&clcid=0x409
  Standalone Upgrade Wizard	http://creators.xna.com/utilities/project_upgrade_wizard

Note that the XNA Framework evolved between XNA Game Studio Express and XNA Game Studio 2.0. Therefore, you probably will need to update your code to account for these changes. Please see the XNA Game Studio 2.0 Upgrade Guide for more information.

If you install XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Beta) with the English version of Visual Studio 2008 on a non-English version of Windows, you may experience the following issues:

• The standard templates are not visible in the integrated development environment (IDE).
• The IDE uses a mix of English and non-English text.

To resolve these issues, click Options on the Tools menu, expand the Environment node, and ensure that International Settings is set to English instead of Same as Microsoft Windows. If you change this setting, you must restart Visual Studio 2008 for the change to take effect.

The XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Beta) release provides limited support for Xbox 360 development. XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Beta) does provide project templates for Xbox 360 projects. Also, you will be able to upgrade your XNA Game Studio 2.0 projects to XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Beta). However, XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Beta) does not support deployment to the Xbox 360 console. Attempting to deploy an Xbox 360 game will result in the following error message.

In XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Beta), the backslash character ("\") is not supported in Zune device names.

In order to deploy games successfully to a Zune device that has the Zune 3.0 firmware installed, you must use XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Beta). Do not use XNA Game Studio 3.0 CTP. If you deploy the game with the CTP, the game will appear to deploy successfully, but afterwards, you will receive the following error message.

If you have Zune game projects that were developed with XNA Game Studio 3.0 CTP, you should upgrade them using the procedure described previously in this Readme file. After upgrading the game project, you will need to rebuild and redeploy the game using XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Beta).

If the executable for a Zune game contains extended ASCII characters (for example, accented characters), the game will fail to run on the Zune device. The game will appear to exit immediately. You will not see any diagnostic messages in the Visual Studio IDE when this issue occurs. Also, if the game attempts to load a file with a name that contains extended ASCII characters, a run-time exception will occur that indicates that the file could not be found. Examples of such files would be content files and files in the title storage area. To work around these issues, rename the files so that they do not contain any extended ASCII characters.

If you are running an XNA Framework Game on the Windows operating system on a dual-core AMD processor, and the game contacts the Xbox LIVE servers, you may experience unpredictable behavior such as a hanging of the game process. To work around this issue, you should install the AMD Dual-Core Optimizer from AMD on the computer on which you are running the game. Currently, the optimizer is available at the following location.

ClickOnce publishing does not work correctly if the game solution includes a game library project that contains content. The content in the game library is not published correctly and is not available to the game at run time. To work around this issue, include the content in the game project itself instead of in a game library project.

For Windows XP SP2, the XnaPack tool extracts games to the following location on your local hard drive.

For Windows Vista, the XnaPack tool extracts games to the following location.

The value of the %USERPROFILE% environment variable changes depending on the login ID of the currently logged-in user. It also depends on the drive letter of the partition on which Windows was installed and whether you are running Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista. For example, for Windows XP SP2 installed on drive C:, XnaPack would extract packaged games to the following location.

where "<user>" represents the login ID of the currently logged-in user. For Windows Vista installed on drive D:, XnaPack would extract packaged games to the following location.

where, again, "<user>" represents the login ID of the currently logged-in user.

You may want to create a Windows shortcut to this location so that you can access it more easily.

The Visual C++ 8.0 SP1 runtime files are required by games based on XNA Framework 3.0, the version of the XNA Framework used by XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Beta) These files are installed by .NET Framework 3.5 or you can install them using the standalone Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable. You can obtain the redistributable at the following URL.

• Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 SP1 Redistributable

If an assembly reference in your Zune game has the Copy Local property set to true, an error could occur when unpacking the Zune game.

Before packing your game with the XNA Game Studio Package utility (xnapack.exe), verify that the following assemblies have Copy Local set to false:

• .NET Framework assembly: mscorlib, System, System.Core, System.XML, System.Xml.Linq
• XNA Framework assembly: Microsoft.Xna.Framework, Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game

If an XNA Framework game throws NoSuitableGraphicsDeviceException, inspect the text in the unhandled exception dialog box to determine whether the cause is an unsupported video card.

To run XNA Framework games on Windows, you need a graphics card that supports Shader Model 1.1 or greater and DirectX 9.0c. We recommend that you use a graphics card that supports Shader Model 2.0 because some samples and starter kits may require it.

Make sure that your graphics card is using the most recent drivers by checking with your hardware vendor and by accessing Microsoft Update.

Items in content projects must have their build action set to Compile in order to be built by the XNA Framework Content Pipeline. If the build action is set to Content, the item will not be built. By default, items in content projects have their build action set to Compile.

The setup program for XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Beta) installs the August 2007 version of the Microsoft Cross-Platform Audio Creation Tool (XACT). You must use this version of XACT when developing with XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Beta).

When using the Microsoft Cross-Platform Audio Creation Tool (XACT) with XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Beta), you are limited to importing no more than 200 wave banks.

In XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Beta), the Spacewar starter kit has been removed from the product. Some of the tutorials included in the documentation use art assets from the Spacewar starter kit. These assets are available from the XNA Creators Club Online website for use with the tutorials. See the tutorials documentation for more information.

To run XNA Framework games on Windows, you need a graphics card that supports Shader Model 1.1 or greater and DirectX 9.0c. We recommend that you use a graphics card that supports Shader Model 2.0 because some samples and starter kits may require it.

Make sure that your graphics card is using the most recent drivers by checking with your hardware vendor and by accessing Microsoft Update.

Only the following Tutorial and How-To sample code referenced in the documentation has been updated to work with XNA Game Studio 3.0 (Beta).

• Tutorial 1: Displaying a 3D Model on the Screen
• Tutorial 2: Making Your Model Move Using Input
• Tutorial 3: Making Sounds with XNA Game Studio
• Tutorial 4: Make a Game in 60 Minutes
• Tutorial 5: Adding Multiplayer and Networking Support to the Game
• How To: Play a Song
• How To: Stream a Sound
• How To: Build a Simple Networked Game on Zune

Sample code referenced by the remaining Tutorials and How-To topics will be updated for the final release.