XNA game development kickstart

Question

I'm going to develop a small game with my friend. (we want to do this not for money, just for learning purposes)

Are there any good books or online resources devoted to XNA game developement? Architectural questions are specially interesting for us ;)

p.s. We are pro developers (but in the businesss area), thus even easy things for game developers can be not so obvious for us :)

Answer 1

I started XNA back in may this year, and I have already published my first Windows Phone 7 game which got pretty good reception, and I am now developing my first "big" game, which I am aiming to publish on Xbox Live Indie Games aswell as on PC. It's great :) !

Before you start learning XNA, I recommend that you will learn at least basics of C#, if you dont know them yet. There are some great web sites such as C# Station. Alternatively, you could try this book from Deitel which I found awesome.

As for XNA book, I personally found this book from O'Reilly's great and beginner-friendly. The book introduces you to 2D, 3D and Windows Phone 7 programming, aswell as using and animating Avatar's on Xbox games. Everything what happens in the code is explained well and deeply.

I also recommend you to join App Hub, where is a great and helping community on the forums, and great tutorials and complete and well commented games on the education catalog !

When you have finished your game, dont hesitate to submit it to Xbox Live Indie Games! Although, it requires App Hub premium membership which costs 99$.