A few days ago, Novell unveiled its new "MonoTouch" SDK to be used for developing iPhone applications in .NET, much to the happiness of some and, unfortunately, the opposite for others. It seems that developers are already taking advantage of this, according to Ars Technica, with a developer porting its popular game to the Zune HD in just 12 hours.
The developer, Foundation42, posted their milestone via Twitter, showing the power of Novell"s new SDK and what can be achieved with it. The game that was ported is called WordMonger, and was displayed on a YouTube video which we have included below. Many have questioned Microsoft"s games which were included with the Zune HD, as (although they"re free) they display a short ad each time they are launched. To add to this, Microsoft doesn"t have an official way of distributing apps as Apple does with its App Store, though that will perhaps come in the near future. The only way to install third party apps properly on the Zune HD so far, according to Ars Technica, is to, "[have the user] download and install Visual C#, .Net 3.5, and the XNA Game Studio 3.1. Then, the developer must give the source code of their game to the user, and make them build and deploy it manually."
This is a great step forward for iPhone developers, .NET developers, and even Novell, as their SDK will begin to show off its capabilities as more companies pull this off.