We've been seeing some great momentum build for Kodu in the PC in our academic program. Educators and students have really helped us prioritize our ongoing Kodu development work, resulting in some very nice new features and refinements, particularly in the area of mouse and keyboard user interface.

Now we're ready to broaden the Kodu community on the PC. While the PC version is still in development - we're calling it a Technical Preview, it is now available for absolutely anyone to download completely free of charge, right here, starting today: http://fuse.microsoft.com/kodu/

The biggest change in this version is the new mouse and keyboard UI. This lets you use Kodu completely without a game controller. This has been a far-reaching change as Kodu was initially designed very specifically for a game controller. While the mouse and keyboard version does not quite have the polish of the game controller version, we are already seeing some nice advantages for PC based users and we expect more to come. This is still in development and an area where we would like to receive lost of feedback.

There are also many changes for the new version when compared to the current xbox version:

- deep enhancements to the 'move' verb allowing, for example, a character to follow a path while watching another object - great for scripted camera moves
- nested logic - covered earlier here on the blog - allowing more powerful combinations of sensors and actions
- streamlined terrain editing tools
- ability for characters to respond to mouse and keyboard events