I suppose I ought to mention the bad news at some point…
The Content Pipeline won't be included in the XNA Framework beta that we are releasing on August 30.
Ouch! I just looked at my calendar and that date is really close now. I'd better stop wasting time typing in blog posts and get back to work :-)
One of the things that
is very different at Microsoft from places I worked in the past is just
how many checks and balances you have to go through before you can
release code to the public. Back in the day I used to throw a final
build together late on a Sunday night, then see it on shelves a
week later. Not here! After the coding is finished, we have testers to
test the product, documentation writers to document it, and setup
developers to make sure everything gets set up properly.
All of this takes time, and unfortunately the Content Pipeline came in slightly too late to make it through the process in time for our beta release.
But fear not! The
pipeline feature team is still hard at work getting everything finished
up so we can get this into your hands as soon as possible.