Earlier in May, Microsoft revealed a number of changes it was planning to make to Visual Studio 11 in between the current beta version and the upcoming release candidate build of the software development tool. Now Microsoft has revealed the final product lineup for Visual Studio 11 (technically, a codename for what Microsoft will likely call Visual Studio 2012 when the final version is released).
The people who like free software will be happy to know that Microsoft will offer free versions of Visual Studio 11 under the "Express" branding. Of course, there will be a Visual Studio 11 Express for Windows 8 and Microsoft says it will support C#, Visual Basic, C++ and JavaScript. There will also be Visual Studio 11 Express versions for Web development along with Visual Studio 11 Express for Windows Azure.
Microsoft will release a new Visual Studio Express port for Windows Phone developers for the first time this year, allowing app makers a free way to make Windows Phone 7.5 apps (and presumably Windows Phone 8 apps at some point).
As far as the full, paid, versions of Visual Studio 11, Microsoft will offer a number of different editions, ranging from Visual Studio 11 Professional for $1,199, all the way to Visual Studio 11 Ultimate for $13,299; the prices include an MSDN subscription. You can go to the Visual Studio 11 website to check out the differences between the editions. One change is that LightSwitch, which was previously released as a separate stand alone program, will now be a part of Visual Studio 11.
In terms of system requirements, Microsoft said:
Visual Studio 11 hardware requirements will be the same as Visual Studio 2010’s. If you are working now with Visual Studio 2010 you can enjoy the new performance improvements in Visual Studio 11 without any additional hardware investment. Visual Studio 11 leverages core capabilities that are only present in the latest versions of Windows. For this reason Visual Studio 11 requires Windows 7 or higher to run.
The release candidate version of Visual Studio 11 is expected to be available around the same time the Release Preview version of Windows 8 comes out, around the first week of June.
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