Microsoft Talks Longhorn, XNA & Xbox 2

Longhorn will natively support the XNA development system, and Longhorn-based PCs will directly benefit from this. “Xbox 2 peripherals will all work on PC,” said [Windows Gaming general manager Dean Lester], clarifying that Xbox controllers, steering wheels, and other console-related peripheral functionality will all be brought into Longhorn’s portfolio, as will Xbox Live functionality.

For game players, this will make for, if nothing else, an added convenience, since playing a game on a PC or an Xbox will ideally come down to little more than unplugging the controller from one and plugging it in to the other. For game developers, Microsoft hopes that the introduction of XNA will help standardize development on both platforms–to such an extent that “you won’t have to choose between Xbox or PC” to develop games…and, ideally, so that players won’t have to choose between the two platforms to play these games.

Microsoft talks Longhorn, XNA, and Xbox 2 @ GameSpot