Last week I was fortunate to attend Microsoft Build 2016 conference.  It was a great learning opportunity on any Microsoft related technologies.  Admittedly Microsoft platforms represent a small % of my players, however with Windows 10 ever increasing popularity I view it as a potentially growing market.

However to my present surprise this year’s focus seemed to be around multi platform app development, i.e. develop on Windows publish anywhere.  In fact Microsoft’s recent purchase of Xamarin and its integration into Visual Studio it is actually possible to use Windows 10 & Visual Studio to make Android & iOS apps & games.   Your Visual Studio can even connect to a remote Mac for Build & Debugging.  Add to this the fact that Xamarin is now free for Small Teams on both Mac & Windows and I am sold.  This is a huge change from just 3 years ago when all Microsoft could talk about was Windows 8 & Windows Phone.  I am really excited in this new direction and I hope they continue it.

Another announcement I was excited about was the ability to developer unlock any Xbox One.  This would potentially allow indie gamers like me to develop for and test on just a regular Xbox One device.  Can anyone say Train Sim for Xbox One?

There was lots more around conversational intelligence, Sky Bots & a slew of Azure announcements.  For a good recap on the whole conference visit: news.microsoft.com/build2016/