First of all - sorry for not only the wait, but also for lack of informations. Last couple weeks have been really frantic - I was supposed to have 3 weeks off from work, but since the game we're working (at work) is coming late, they revoked my vacations and I'm staying here every day for ~12-16 hours. It'll be this way till 9th of January, which is the final submission date (hopefully). After that we're regaining works.
In other news: Microsoft released XNA 2.0 which is pretty sweet, but the EULA has a gotcha - you can't use text chat within it, as the LIVE network is encrypted and it violates Patriot Act and other stuff like that that forbids encrypted conversation. Using Windows Sockets system may or may not prevent this - dunno, XNA team still haven't answered this (prolly at least THEY have vacation ;) ). The other solution, proposed by Shawn Hargreaves (XNA dev) was that they will add something that will allow for unencrypted data sending. Have to see how this will turn out. For the time being, Ekaiyo is still developed in XNA 1.0 Refresh. Since I won't have even one evening free before 9th of Jan, probably this issue will be resolved before I'll sit back to working on the game ;).