The new logo Microsoft uses for Windows 8

Windows 8 Consumer Preview

The Windows 8 Consumer Preview just went live. According to Microsoft, this is a stable public preview, not a beta.

Windows 8 Logo

I’m still in the process of downloading it, but in a presentation, Microsoft claimed a large number of changes since the Windows 8 Developer Preview last years.

Oh, and all apps in the Windows Store will be free until Windows 8 is officially released in October.

Download Links

Windows 8 Consumer Preview

Visual Studio 11 Beta for Windows 8 Consumer Preview

XNA

I am happy to report that XNA Game Studio 4.0 Refresh is working just fine on Windows 8 Consumer Preview!

Here is my installation order:

  1. Visual Studio 11 (not required, but nothing bad happened from installing this before the older versions)
  2. Visual Studio 2010 Professional (either this)
  3. Visual C# 2010 Express (or this – I installed both ;))
  4. Microsoft Games for Windows Live (see How to work around a possible XNA Game Studio or Windows Phone SDK install failure on Windows 8 on Aaron Stebner’s blog)
  5. Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.1

Everything works as usual and it was no problem installing it in parallel with Visual Studio 11