Video games developed with Microsoft's XNA toolkit, the company's game development framework for the Xbox 360 and Windows Phone, may soon be able to run on iOS, Silverlight and Android. An open source tool to do just this has been in the works since the end of 2010 by Aussie coder Andrew Russell, who crowd-funded the project through RocketHub and so far has received more than $10,000 in donations for its development.
The tool in question is known as ExEn, and though it is still in early development, the first public preview was released last week. Right now, ExEn supports iOS and Silverlight. Android support is coming, but the project is currently behind schedule, Russell noted on his blog. It also can only accommodate games using 2D "sprite" graphics in its current form, although the final version is planned to support 3D games as well.
Russell has already successfully used ExEn to produce a port of one of his XNA applications to iOS. Besides providing a cost-effective way for Xbox Live indie game developers to port their games onto Apple's lucrative App Store, and soon Android Marketplace, it will also allow them to promote their games by offering a web-based demo powered by Silverlight on their websites. You can read more about the project here.