I’m in Las Vegas for Microsoft’s Mix10 conference, where the developer story for Windows Phone 7 series is being unveiled. According to the press release, the tooling for Windows Phone 7 looks like this:

• Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone (free)
• Windows Phone 7 Series add-in for Visual Studio 2010 RC
• XNA Game Studio 4.0
• Emulator
• Expression Blend for Win Phone CTP

Essentially, you are meant to use XNA for games on the device, and Silverlight for other kinds of application.

Another part of the announcement describes new services for developers – Microsoft Location Service to provide location information, and a notification service to “push information to the phone, regardless of whether or not an application is running”.

Applications will be marketed through a new Windows Phone Marketplace.

I’ll report more details as they emerge, here and on The Register.

Update: Microsoft has added that Expression Blend 4.0, for Silverlight 4.0 support, will be a free upgrade from Expression Blend 3.0.

Silverlight 4.0 RC, Expression Blend 4.0 beta, VS 2010 add-in available for download here: http://silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight-4-beta/ 

The MSDN documentation for Windows Phone 7 is here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff402531(VS.92).aspx