Anyone could develop for Windows and distribute their game however they liked, but if you wanted to develop for the Xbox 360, you needed to be part of a game studio and have a publishing deal with Microsoft. Prior to the mid-2000s, you had two language choices for serious game development, C/C++ or C/C++ combined with Assembly Language. NET Framework-compatible project created and maintained by Xamarin. This is accomplished by use of the Mono framework, which is a free and open-source.

There are ports for iOS, Android, Mac OSX, Linux, Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, PlayStation Mobile, PlayStation 4, Raspberry Pi, and Ouya, with more being created all the time.

It fully supports 2D and 3D graphics, audio, networking, and multiple inputs including touch, mouse, gamepad, and keyboard. MonoGame is an open source implementation of the XNA 4.X API.