I am amazed this hasn't been posted or mentioned, I did a search but found nothing which is odd as DX12 was announced.
Links: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dotnet/archive/2014/04/02/announcing-net-native-preview.aspx and http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/vstudio/dn642499.aspx
I haven't tried it out and I know it is Win Store atm but the blog / FAQ sounds promising for all things .NET. One of the things that really caught my eye was:
Will this allow C# developers better experience with developing highly graphical apps and/or games?
Yes. The .NET Native compiler shares parts of the code base with the Microsoft C++ optimizer.
However I am not entirely sure what it means by 'better experience', I would assume performance but it somewhat implies that people have been having performance issues with developing gfx apps in C# which I always was under the impression was rare simply due to how much content and work would be required to reach that, as in AAA quality products. I haven't even bothered attempting to make a store app but for those of you who have was performance issues noticeable in store games made in C#? Let me put it another way, I have been on the same project since early 2012, the project is for desktop and is growing with a lot of content yet performance issues have not occurred once, where C++ would have made a noticeable difference, despite pushing the limits gracefully and 95% being C#. Perhaps I am looking too much into this but it reads like there has been performance concerns with C# and store apps. I suppose it doesn't matter either way as even if it was it will soon become a problem of the past.
Another thing that made me do a happy dance and is worth a mention here is:
However, apps will get deployed on end-user devices as fully self-contained natively compiled code (when .NET Native enters production), and will not have a dependency on the .NET Framework on the target device/machine
At the risk of starting a language war, which let's be honest MS somewhat attracts in the first paragraph "This preview release of .NET Native offers you the performance of C++ with the productivity of C#. .NET Native enables the best of both worlds!", how does this change things? Although mono and things like xamarin exist, does .NET native and MS new direction mean .NET languages in the near future will be cross platform (naturally without mono) that perform just as good at C++?
There are a lot of quotes I removed because it was practically a copy paste, due to excitement, but this is something I feel worthy of staying here.
Because .NET Native uses the C++ optimizer to generate binaries it eliminates the need for an obfuscator in most cases.
Again I know this is for window store atm but I think it is safe to assume in the future this will be for all things .NET
In case no one has the initial blog posting: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dotnet/archive/2014/04/03/the-next-generation-of-net.aspx Have a look at RyuJIT as well as other features