Since it’s initial launch in 2006, the XNA Game Studio developers’ toolkit has seen five iterations, and has been integral to the success of many popular games released under XBL’s “indie” label (I Made a Game With Zombies in It!), as well as a few full-scale Arcade games like Fez, Skulls of the Shogun, and Bastion (pictured above).

Unfortunately, internal communication seems to indicate that Microsoft is discontinuing support for XNA, at least in its current form. This could potentially be devastating to smaller developers who rely on this toolkit to get their games onto Live.

It is worth noting that Microsoft hasn’t officially pulled the plug on XNA or talked about a successor platform, so it’s possible there’s something new coming down the pipes. Also, just because they won’t be updating it doesn’t mean they’re taking the existing version away. One might even wonder if no more support for the current generation of tools hints at something new on the horizon…