I am (or rather was) a big fan of XNA, Microsoft's C# game development framework, and I had high hopes for it. I was particularly enthusiastic when Silverlight started supporting a subset of it. Unfortunately Microsoft has given no indication (as far as I am aware of) that they will be supporting XNA for Winows 8 Metro and Silverlight is apparently not being supported on Windows 8 metro. There have been a lot of speculation around the future of C#-based game development for Windows on various threads. For an interesting and informed discussion on the topic see this topic on gamedev.stackexchange.com.
When I first read the thread on GameDev several months ago I had skimmed past a post talking about an open-source project called MonoGame. Today I revisited the MonoGame web-site and I was impressed with the number of downloads, positive reviews, and the general momentum of the project.
Here is the MonoGame mission statement:
MonoGame is an Open Source implementation of the Microsoft XNA 4 Framework. Our goal is to allow XNA developers on Xbox 360, Windows & Windows Phone to port their games to the iOS, Android, Mac OS X, Linux and Windows 8 Metro. PlayStation Mobile development is currently in progress.
Imagine writing applications and games for all of those platforms at once in C#? Wouldn't that be amazing! To be honest I'm generally very skeptical when it comes to the success of open-source projects, but this group seems to be doing everything right. I also like their approach of building upon mature open-source projects like OpenTK and SlimDX.
However, what reaslly sold me were the trailers for ARMED! from SickHead games. This awesome looking game has been ported to Windows 8 Metro and Windows 7 Phone using MonoGame. I'm curious about the success they will have porting to other platforms!
At least for now I've become optimistic and enthusiastic about the prospect of serious game development in C# once again.
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4bEWO4-I2A[/video]