Not long ago Visual Studio was the IDE you used to program languages and technologies that were essentially Microsoft. Now you can program in Python and JavaScript and, just announced, the Unity, Unreal or Cocos2d game engines. 

Microsoft has announced a partnership with three gaming engine providers to support easy ways to get Visual Studio, including the free Visual Studio Community edition, working with their game engines.

Until now if you wanted to use a game engine with Visual Studio you had to download the Tools for Unity add-on. After this you could start to program 3D assets using C# - which made it a reasonable replacement for XNA if you were just getting started. In the near future you should be able to add the Unreal and Cocos2d engine to your list of choices. 

• Cocos2d is a 2d game engine that is acquiring 3D elements. It uses OpenGL to run in browsers, iOS, Android, Windows Phone, OSX and Windows.
  
  
• Unity is a well known 3D game engine that is already integrated with Visual Studio supports 21 different platforms, including Xbox One, SteamOS, OS X, iOS, Android, Windows, WebGL, Oculus Rift and GearVR.
  
  
• Unreal Engine 4 is a well known 3D game engine that recently introduced a free use deal. It supports a wide range of platforms including Windows, Xbox One, Playstation 4, OS X, iOS, Android, Linux, SteamOS, HTML5 as well as Steam VR, Oculus Rift and Gear VR.

As described by John Montgomery on the Visual Studio blog, the idea is to make it as easy as possible to think of Visual Studio and the game engine of your choice as a single entity. 

"We still have engineering work to do to deliver on the co-installation, but if you’re a game developer or someone who wants to learn to create games, these partnerships will make it a lot easier to acquire the best tools for the job – pulling down Unity along with Visual Studio and the Visual Studio Tools for Unity all at once, for example."

Visual Studio is one of the best IDEs available and it is becoming increasingly possible to stay within it its comfortable environs to program in the language of your choice for the platform of your choice. 

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