C#... I never touched. Mostly because it's tied to only Microsoft, which would be incredibly limiting in my opinion.

That was only true 10 years ago. C# runs on: Windows (Desktop), Windows (RT), OSX, Linux, Xbox 360, iOS, Android, WP7, WP8, WP8.1, and probably others that I haven't personally developed for yet. I have personally executed C# code on every single one of those platforms I mentioned.

If you want, you can develop for many of those platforms without ever using a Microsoft product.

Required reading.

I generally agree with the given advice, but this thread isn't the typical "what language should I use".

Once you throw in the caveat of a minimal download/install process, the language you choose does become somewhat more relevant.

C#... I never touched. Mostly because it's tied to only Microsoft, which would be incredibly limiting in my opinion.

That was only true 10 years ago. C# runs on: Windows (Desktop), Windows (RT), OSX, Linux, Xbox 360, iOS, Android, WP7, WP8, WP8.1, and probably others that I haven't personally developed for yet. I have personally executed C# code on every single one of those platforms I mentioned.

If you want, you can develop for many of those platforms without ever using a Microsoft product.

I so wish Xamarin was free for non-commercial usage. Additionally over time, their pricing is bordering on insane now. At 300$ a platform it was a bit pricey, but not a gigantic barrier of entry. But the new pricing of 25 - 160$ a month... that's nuts. The starter edition, with the inability to call native code, is effectively useless to game devs.

So, while C# runs anywhere, running on iOS and Android is stupendously expensive, especially compared to... well, basically every other programming language.

This is coming from someone who is a big C# fan.

If you expect your game to sell in the thousands of even millions of dollars, then the cost of the development framework and other assorted tools is chump change, but yes for the beginner the cost is quite a challenge to be able to have full cross-platform deployment.

I so wish Xamarin was free for non-commercial usage. Additionally over time, their pricing is bordering on insane now. At 300$ a platform it was a bit pricey, but not a gigantic barrier of entry. But the new pricing of 25 - 160$ a month... that's nuts. The starter edition, with the inability to call native code, is effectively useless to game devs.

So, while C# runs anywhere, running on iOS and Android is stupendously expensive, especially compared to... well, basically every other programming language.

This is coming from someone who is a big C# fan.

Unity is what I'm using to deploy to iOS and Android. Unity still has non-monthly pricing, and it's significant ($1500 for iOS and another $1500 for Android).

Under the hood, that stuff is INCREDIBLY complicated, so I understand why it's so expensive. I've seen the guts of it myself, and it's not code I'd like to maintain on a daily basis, much less for free.

I've heard rumors that Unity might be trying to write their own C#-to-native compiler toolchains so that they can avoid Xamarin licensing complications. Eventually this may mean the iOS and Android plugins are less expensive than they currently are. I wish them luck, especially because it might mean that we finally get C# 5.0+ support in Unity.