XNA Game Studio 4.0 is coming out really soon

From what is available on blogs led by Microsoft developers, it is clear that XNA Game Studio 4.0 is coming out really soon. What is it about? It still supports development of Windows and Xbox 360 games, but it also introduces development capabilities for Windows Phone. Shawn Hargreaves writes [url="http://blogs.msdn.com/shawnhar/archive/2010/03/09/in-which-hints-become-facts-xna-game-studio-4-0.aspx"]in his blog[/url](short list of new features):

[quote]
* New platform
- Windows Phone 7 Series

* New features
- Integrates with Visual Studio 2010
- Dynamic audio output
- Microphone input
- BasicEffect has four new siblings
- SkinnedEffect
- EnvironmentMapEffect
- DualTextureEffect
- AlphaTestEffect

* Improved portability and usability
- Collapsed graphics caps into just two profile levels: Reach and HiDef
- Many graphics API improvements
- This involves some breaking API changes
- Split Microsoft.Xna.Framework.dll into several assemblies, to make it more obvious which pieces are available on each platform
[/quote]

If you are interested in finding more about XNA 4.0, you might also want to check out Michael Klutcher's [url="http://klucher.com/blog/achievement-unlocked-xna-game-studio-4-0-for-windows-phone/"]blog post[/url].