Today at GDC Microsoft announced its new set of XNA products, and distributed a CTP of XNA Build to people on the show. The XNA family of tools aims to ease game development for both PC and Xbox 360 developers.

If you didn’t happen to attend GDC like us and most of the rest of the world you can download the tools (including MechCommander 2 sourcecode) from Microsoft’s site. Details on all of the products can be found on the XNA homepage.

Apart from the product details not much is known, Microsoft plans to further update the game development community at the summer Gamefest event. So no prices are known yet, and obviously neither whether this is the rumored cheap devkit and whether this allows you get a cheap homebrew certificate allowing you to run custom signed code on your 360.

For descriptions of the different tools I’ll just summarize the official press release:

XNAâ„¢ Build is a tool and set of technologies which will help game studios manage the growing complexities of their game content builds.

XNA Framework is an exciting new development and execution environment which will allow game developers to more easily create games which run on the Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 platforms. It is being designed with a unified set of class libraries which will allow for maximal re-use of code and assets across target platforms. A custom version of the Common Language Runtime is being built to enable the execution of managed code on an Xbox 360, and at GDC the XNA team showcased some exciting demonstrations of games which were built on an early version of this technology.

XNA Studio will enable enhanced collaboration between content creators, programmers, management and testers to speed the game production process. XNA Studio will extend and customize Visual Studio 2005 Team System to make it an ideal solution for game studios and publishers. XNA Studio will provide robust versions of key production tools such as asset management, defect tracking, project automation and work item lists. These tools will work together seamlessly to automate common development tasks and present interfaces tailored to the different functions within the team. XNA Studio will allow team members to collaborate quickly and effectively using familiar techniques and tools, even when elements of the team are distributed geographically, an increasing trend in game development. This all adds up to more developer time generating unique content and less time running the content process.