Viability of C#/.NET as the new standard game dev platform?

Question

For a long time now C++ has been the dominate game development language. Many AAA quality 3D engines are available to fit any budget.

My question is, with the rise of X

Answer 1

Just add to the conversation ... C#/.NET is certainly available on other non-microsoft platforms.

• Mono.Wii
• Tao Framework

Between those two right there, you can target linux, mac, wii ... I'm sure if there was enough funding/interest in it, they can get Mono to run on a ps3 as well. At that point, you'd be able to write for all major game platforms using C# (albeit, probably not with XNA per-se).

Also, to anyone wondering about performance ... lots of great things are in the works, such as Mono's new support for fast floating point math using their SIMD extensions (x86 only for now, of course): http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2008/Nov-03.html