According to reports Microsoft could be at least looking very seriously at the XNA development environment that is used on Xbox Live Indie games. Microsoft reportedly sent out Emails to XNA developers saying that the XNA Game Studio is not in active development and DirectX is no longer an evolving as a technology.

Because of this Microsoft says that effective April 1st, 2014 XNA/DirectX will be fully retired from the MVP awards program. While Microsoft has yet to comment and many XNA/DirectX developers claim that they have not received the Email, it is difficult to say what Microsoft might be up to here.

Some believe that the announcement means that Microsoft will not be offering or featuring an Xbox Live Indie Games offering on the next Xbox console when it releases. It would seem that Indie developers are not so concerned about the loss of the XNA Game Studio itself, as long as Microsoft has some better to replace it with.

We have to say that the potential loss of Xbox Live Indie titles would be a big deal to some, but it is questionable how many would actually miss it when you look at the entire community as a whole. We still think we have seen some very innovative offerings and concepts that we would have never seen make its way to a console if it was not for the XNA Game Studio and Indie development. Let’s hope that Microsoft continues to support Indie development on the next console as it has been a very good thing.