Recently the XNA Framework and Game Studio products have been updated to version 3.1. With this came some changes and a whole new set of great features some of which include:
Avatars
Many of you are already familiar with what an Avatar is but for those of you who do not. Avatars are simple 3D persona's that represent every Xbox LIVE gamer or gamer tag. For the most part they are quite cute and oddly I have seen/known many people that have been quite successful in creating avatars that really do a great job in depicting themselves (I hadn't thought it possible.) Avatars can/are used in friends lists, party chats, and in XNA games to further enrich the overall gaming experience.
Xbox LIVE Party
This is a new technology that was introduced to the Xbox LIVE Community in one of the more recent Xbox 360 dashboard updates. Xbox LIVE Party is a communications channel that connects 8 players together regardless of what they may be doing on the Xbox at the time to a live chat. In addition to the chat capabilities Xbox LIVE Party also creates a much more stream-lined way to start up multi-player games between players.
Video Enhancements
After a great amount of requests from the community the XNA 3.1 Framework now supports the notion of in-game video for such things as splash and introduction screens, cut scenes between game states and for true in-game video. A few of the features that stand out that are specific to the new video enhancements are the new full screen video playback, video playback to texture, access to video properties (such as time, current position) and my favorite, the playback of multiple video streams concurrently.
Audio Enhancements
There was not much changed between the XNA 3.0 and the XNA 3.1 Framework's with the exception of some subtle changes in regards to how the SoundEffect object plays audio. However one thing I wanted to mention was that since the XNA 3.0 Framework, developers can now use the XACT 3.0 Cross platform audio tool to create XNA based audio projects and support xWMA compression right in their XNA games.
Where do I get more information?
For a more detailed description of what's new in the XNA 3.1 Framework have a look here. If you haven't already make sure to download XNA Game Studio 3.1 from here. Make sure to check out the Creators Club website for starter kits, utilities, tutorials and support forums here.