Microsoft's MakeCode Arcade Leaves Beta, Aims to Hook New Programmers with Block-Based Game Building

MakeCode Arcade, a Microsoft project designed to introduce students to block-based programming through the hook of designing and building their own games, officially progressed from beta to general release this week.

"The MakeCode team is very happy and proud to announce that MakeCode Arcade has been officially released for general availability today," the project's maintainers announced earlier this week. "For those of you who have been following our progress, you’ll know that we’ve been working on MakeCode Arcade for about two years now... and we’ve had it in Beta for the past year while we’ve continued to get feedback, fix bugs, make improvements and just generally polish up the experience.

"Huge thanks to everyone who has been using the Beta version, filing bugs and offering us suggestions (shout outs to Kevin J Walters and Alex Kulcsar for helping us find a lot of great bugs!). Also big thanks to our amazing hardware partners who have worked with us to make super fun Arcade-compatible game devices that really bring the Arcade games to life!"

Those hardware partners — Adafruit, Kitronik, Ovobot, BrainPad, and others - produce devices, typically handheld and including a display and battery pack, which support the games created by MakeCode Arcade, bringing creations off the desktop or laptop and into a physical device. Those who don't have hardware can make use of a simulator, built into the MakeCode editor and executable in any modern web browser.

More information on MakeCode Arcade, including the changes and improvements made for the first general release, can be found on the official blog post.