The XNA Game Studio Express has been released! Althought right now I think it's pretty much just the XNA Framework and a Project Type that attaches on to Visual C# Express, but in the future there is supposed to be some more add ons that make game developement even more fun and simpler.

Good news is.. because of this I don't see why I couldn't just reference the XNA framework classes and give it a go in Visual Basic .Net as well, something which I will try later.

Great news is... YES, the XNA framework DOES make things SOOOOOOO much easier when you're trying to develope a game. No longer will you have to write pages of boiler plate code to acuire, init, reaquire your devices. The sample game which they provided is a TREASURE TROVE of game programming guidance. Hopefully this will truly revinvigorate all the hobbyists game programmers out there!

Bad news is I haven't found a way to init a game as a window inside a form ala a user control, hence right now I can't use XNA to code my advanced graphical displays in my real world business apps. Hopefully I just missed out something in the docs!