Will we see better integration with Unity and VS as a result of this acquisition?.. smoother workflow, tighter support for newer .NET versions, and platform agnostic development as a result would be most awesome.
its either very good or very bad
its either microsoft will bring .net runtime to other platforms which is very good
or microsoft will kill .net runtime on other platforms very bad…
Nothing suggests MS aquireing Xamarin just to disband it. With the good relations between MS and UT an aquisition would probably mean the resolution of the current Mono licensing issue. And in the long run a more complete and robust Mono.
A Unity 5 with updated Mono should make the pressure from the new UT4 license more manageable.
Once step closer to a Windows only Unity…
yikes, this must be part of Microsoft’s EEE. Embrace, extend, and extinguish - Wikipedia
This is probably the most ridiculous post I’ve read today.
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I’m on the fence about this, there are some strong contenders.
Stick around, bub. The day isn’t over yet. I haven’t seen MS do anything right in quite sometime. I doubt they’ll start now.
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You do realise that Microsoft bought Xamarin and not Unity, right?
…R-right?
Yes, I understand that. Xamarin is the first step.
/FYI, I’m being overly dramatic here…
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I’m glad, it can’t be any worse than it is now with Xamarin not willing to budge an inch.
it can get worse if microsoft kills of xamarin since then no future…
but in a way that’s sort of where we’ve been / are / will be 
that would be cutting off their nose to spite their face… MS has ALWAYS wanted .net to be crossplatform, just never materialized. now they get that chance…
I don’t know… if they really wanted it to be cross platform, they would have done it themselves. MS has a vested interest in making development easier on Windows, WinPhone, and Xbox than on their competitor’s platforms. They’re not going to go out of their way to make it easier to release a game on Linux than Windows.
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The topic title should be “…may acquire or invest in…”, since that’s all we actually know right now.
–Eric
Well, with a sharp to ++ converter I’m not sure it’s any kind of doom and gloom going forward.
It should be noted that as Marionette has said, they have always wanted it to be cross platform / bigger reach. In fact, it was Microsoft’s original partnership with Novell that helped bring Mono into existence in the first place. It’s never been a first-class citizen and has always been up to a third party to develop which is why it has and always will be behind in features compared to full fledged .NET, but it definitely was a move by Microsoft to open up cross platform.
Also, .NET is used on several things outside of Windows. For instance, my Netduino Microprocessor that runs the .NET Micro Framework. 
It’s a lot of fun to code for.
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honestly, MS is “not” known for origination, but for acquisition and integration… nearly since the beginning with DOS that has been the chosen path.
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absolutely! spot on!.. i came up before even writing activex and the lawsuit etc etc etc… funny how when they lost the suit, .Net was ready to go, but under the covers? it’s still COM/activex lol…
Hopefully now I can program non game related C# apps for the mac without my wallet getting raped.