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I want to develop mobile game using monogame. Is it necessary to use xamarin? Can I create game without xamarin, like in unity3d? Thanks for answers.

Anewil
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2 Answers2

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Some of the platforms that you can target with MonoGame:

  • Windows / WinPhone / WinStore / ...

You can use .Net to target Windows and thus no need for Mono or Xamarin

  • OS-X

You can use the non-commerical version of Mono to target OS-X using the older (open-source) MonoMac and OpenTK, or if you need access to more of the current OS-X apis, than an Indie (or higher) License of Xamarin.Mac would be needed.

  • Android / iOS

You would need an Indie (or higher) License of Xamarin.iOS and/or Xamarin.Android

Of course, you can get a 30-day trail of Xamarin to play around with.

SushiHangover
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  • He did say mobile game. Great answer though. – craftworkgames Oct 24 '15 at 12:12
  • But Unity is using Mono too and it's free. Are there some diffrences between mono in xamarin and unity? – Anewil Oct 24 '15 at 12:57
  • Unity licensed Mono from Xamarin and has chosen with their business model to offer a 'free' personal version. The Mono version that Unity has legal access to is ~2.6 (w/ mods from Unity) and due to legal, costs and/or politics has chosen not to license the newer versions from Xamarin and they are writing an IL to cpp conversion tool so they can convert any CIL assemblies to native and thus remove Mono as a dependency. – SushiHangover Oct 24 '15 at 13:28
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    FYI: Mono, while open-sourced, is dual-licensed, and using it commercially like Unity does, requires a license from Xamarin to do so. Same if you wish to use Mono to statically link and/or AOT to native your CIL assemblies, Xamarin includes that license to end-users of Xamarin.iOS, Xamarin.Mac, and Xamarin.Android, so not only are you getting the tools, that are not open-sourced, to build those apps, but also the license required to distribute those apps. – SushiHangover Oct 24 '15 at 13:36
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Now, since Microsoft acquired Xamarin and give it out for free, there is no reason to avoid Xamarin. MonoGame and Xamarin now work perfectly together and is a perfect free solution to develop mobile games.

The only downer is the MonoGame.Portable, which is still in 3.2.99-Beta and makes it harder to create the game inside an PCL.

Matt
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