We had all been waiting for MIX10, Microsoft’s huge developer conference coming up in a few weeks. We were all expecting that to be the time when Microsoft would come out and start releasing more details about the upcoming mobile Operating System. And while we’re sure they’re still going to follow through with that (because development for applications will be a major point for Windows Phone 7 Series), it seems that Microsoft wanted to jump the gun a bit. So much, in fact, that they wanted to showcase just what game developers for XNA should be expecting in the next few months.

The bottom line is something that we’ve heard rumored before, so now that Microsoft has officially come clean on the details, we can all sigh with relief. Enter Charlie Kindel, a major presence within Windows Phone’s developer experience team. He chimed in, and detailed a few key aspects of the developer platform for the world to take in. The main things to take away? First and foremost, the fact that Silverlight, XNA, and .NET frameworks are going to be the mainstay for developers this time around. This isn’t a big surprise, considering Silverlight is a prominent platform for Microsoft, and XNA is a huge platform for Xbox as well as the Zune HD.

But for all those fans of Windows Mobile out there, there’s a bit of a dark cloud looming over all of this great news. Kindel also verified that there won’t be any love whatsoever between Windows Mobile 6.x (and obviously previous versions) and Windows Phone 7 Series. Meaning, no backwards compatibility. Yes, it’s a pain for those who wanted to stay within the same ecosystem, but that’s just not going to happen. Windows Phone 7 is an entirely different platform, and as Microsoft moves ahead, they’re obviously hoping that not only will the developers join them, but so will their customers. We’ll be the first ones in line, to be honest, and we can’t wait to see what more details make their way into the public domain come MIX10, as well as GDC.

[via Engadget]