As announced today in this news item on the Creators Club site, XNA Game Studio 3.1 is now available for download.

Getting started

Here are some links with information about how to download and get started using XNA Game Studio 3.1:

• XNA Game Studio 3.1 download location - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=80782277-d584-42d2-8024-893fcd9d3e82
• XNA Framework Redistributable 3.1 download location - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=53867a2a-e249-4560-8011-98eb3e799ef2
• Getting started page - http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=145512
• Readme - http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=145515
• Reporting bugs or feature suggestions - https://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=226

What’s new in XNA Game Studio 3.1?

XNA Game Studio 3.1 includes the following new features:

1. Support for Xbox LIVE Avatars
2. Support for Xbox LIVE Party features
3. Video playback
4. Updated audio APIs for “fire-and-forget” scenarios
5. Support for XACT3
6. Automatic XNB serialization
7. XNA Framework multi-targeting in the Visual Studio 2008 and/or Visual C# 2008 Express Edition IDE
8. Upgrade wizard to convert 3.0 projects to 3.1
9. An updated version of XNA Game Studio Connect that allows so Creators Club members will be able to deploy and debug their games on an Xbox 360.  If you previously deployed Xbox 360 games using XNA Game Studio 2.0 or 3.0 and the old version of XNA Game Studio Connect, you will need to manually delete and re-download XNA Game Studio Connect, as described in this blog post.
10. Downloadable content (only for Xbox LIVE Arcade titles that use the XNA Game Studio 3.1 XDK Extensions)

If you previously had XNA Game Studio 3.0 installed

XNA Game Studio 3.1 is a replacement for XNA Game Studio 3.0, and this means that you have to uninstall XNA Game Studio 3.0 before you can install XNA Game Studio 3.1.

Once you install XNA Game Studio 3.1, it can be used to create, build, deploy and debug both 3.0 and 3.1 projects.  Existing 3.0 projects can be opened in XNA Game Studio 3.1 just like they could in XNA Game Studio 3.0, and you are not required to upgrade your 3.0 project to 3.1.  You can also create new 3.0 or 3.1 projects in the New Project dialog in Visual Studio 2008 or Visual C# 2008 Express Edition.

If you choose to upgrade your 3.0 project to 3.1, you can do so by opening your 3.0 project in XNA Game Studio 3.1, right-clicking on the project in the Visual Studio Solution Explorer, and choosing the Upgrade Solution… menu item.

For more information about upgrading your 3.0 projects, check out this article on the Creators Club site.

If you encounter XNA Game Studio 3.1 setup failures

If you run into setup failures while installing XNA Game Studio 3.1, it can help to look at the log files created by XNA Game Studio 3.0 setup.  They are located at %temp%\XNA Game Studio 3.1 Setup\Logs.

The best way to get help for setup issues is to gather your log files, upload them to a file server of your choice, and then post a question on the Creators Club general forum that includes a link to your log files.  When doing this, please be sure to search for related issues before posting something because your question may have already been answered.

You can also report setup issues via the Connect site - please include your log files as attachments when doing this.

<update date="6/12/2009"> Added a link to a new blog post by Shawn Hargreaves about audio improvements. </update>