Yes. XNA Framework links with .net Framework.

This leads me back to my earlier point that for now, conitec's market share of the indy development industry is secured, but for the future, lets say XNA base their new development packages on the same basis as 3d game studio, so that will be user freindly, cross compatable, high level of support and an established community, what do you get in the longrun?

You may have a viable alternative to the 3d game studio software.
With all the talk about the cross compatability you all mention, you cant ignore this applies to ONLY exisiting 3d game studio developers in a future where XNA is as estabished and developed as 3d game stuio was 2 editions ago,

do you really see the target market of hobbyists and students choosing to pay for software that has all the same features as a free microsoft product?

I dont mean to be a party-pooper, but I think im' saying it as it is.
In business terms the only thing Conitec can do to counter this IS (if not on price) counter this threat in terms of features & benefits, in other words what it offers the user. They would also do well with increasing the profile of the package, maybe they could support or develop software themselves, with an eye to getting one or more titles developed with their software, into certain markets top ten sales. European, American... the usual suspects...

I guess this is where we can all play a part to make this happen... a community project for example?

I have a degree in business, and although that dosnt entitle me to say im an expert in this matter, I know enough to say that XNA Game Studio, would surley cause major problems for Conitec in the future, in terms of market share, and then leading to revenue

But 3dgs is by no means out for the count yet... in fact the fight hasnt started yet, but remember the words of Sun Ztu (Art of war) "A true warrior wonders amoungst his enemies, like a snake through the grass".

there already are viable options, irrlicht, torque, crystal space, and the other 50 million free/indy priced game engines, really xna is not that big of a deal and not that cool and poses almost no problem.. The only reason it might be wanted over 3dgs is its xbox support be that will probably even be quite hard to set up and not worth it for an indy developer.

Plus, C#, as the language that I want to program on. Those who want to write in VB.net will have an advantage over 3DGS, when there's VB.net support in XNA Game Studio Express.

C#, VB.net, .Net Extensions for C++ known as C++/CLI, etc.

But right now, with XNA Game Studio Express, it's C# currently at the time of release.

Cool, so they won't have to revamp the entire 3DGS game engine into a whole new language then? Just add the XNA support at some point? is that correct?

no, you can't just compile a6 (which is written in c/c++) to the cli (.net common language infrastructure).

a6 would have to be converted to c++/cli (c++ for .net) which kind of is a different language but i am not sure how much work that would be. quite a lot i guess.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%2B%2B/CLI
looks like jcl would have to add lots of ^ to the code.