Long story short I've been using XNA for 6 years now just playing around with code, not actually producing anything. It helped me get to where I am today; a professional coder using C#. Well, apparently XNA is dead. After 2 hours of despair I decided that I'd try going to C++ and Direct X (I used them at school so I have some idea of what I'm doing). From what I've ready I can't do that with the new version of VSE; I have to pay to upgrade which I refuse to do unless I started actually making money from my hobby.
So where to now? I've been looking at Unity, which apparently uses C#, however I've never been able to get into it, like at all. I install it, see what looks like a map editor, and decide it's not for me because I'm not looking for a game engine I'm looking for a game library. I'm not really sure if there is anything like XNA out there.
I can say I'm pretty pissed off at Microsoft; all this talk about supporting Indie development then they just yank out the carpet for no reason. I honestly don't know why they did it, especially with them trying to get people developing cross system apps for Windows 8 and especially with them having C# as a primary app language. It just made sense to me that they would expand on XNA to work with all versions of Win 8, straight PC, 360, and the new 720, but instead they slammed the door shut. Don't know where to go from here.
Any thoughts?