[winterhell]

It seems that the rumor about XNA's cancellation is still going around. Even before 4.0 Refresh was released. Some facts: the games run on Windows 8 no problem. The platform has everything you'll ever need for a 2D game and its goals are to be DirecX 9.0c but compatible with Xbox 360 too ( and partially with Windows Phone 7). You can also use its libraries however you want, like doing the math/input/audio stuff in XNA but rendering with OpenGL.
Also you wont have performance advantages with C++ over manages languages like Java and C#. You are just going to spend much more time coding and debugging the logic. Sonic 3 HD (written in XNA) requires just 1GHz single core CPU. Sonic CD 2011 works on mobile phones just fine, I think its in Java. On the other hand a badly written 2D Sonic engine in C++ can tax up to 77% of your core i5-2500K quad core 3.3GHz CPU.
My point is, if you are going to get bottlenecked by something, its going to be the video card first, then the memory consumption, and lastly the CPU processing power, no matter which language you choose, be it C++, .Net or Java.

[nchavez]

True, true -- I don't know C++ or DirectX, so I decided I might as well learn them while I did this, but my code is just degenerating into regular C, which I'm comfortable with and I guess is much simpler than that managed .NET C++ crap Microsoft is peddling (works for C# but makes no sense for C++ in my opinion). I think I'll give C#/XAML and HTML5/JS a chance at some point though.

That's true actually-- I think my Java game runs faster than my C++ implementation of only half of it -- maybe I'll just stick to Java.

XNA works fine on Windows 8, but it won't work as an app -- it'll be restricted to the desktop, which is kind of annoying imo. But there are ports out there I might try at some point -- turns out MonoGame exports to Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, WP7, WP8, and Windows 8 App. They're currently working on a PSP version. I would've tried it out but I just don't have the time.

In case you're interested:
MonoGame

This post has been edited by nchavez: 26 November 2012 - 03:18 PM