To be fair to Microsoft, it's raised plenty of interest with its Windows Phone 7 announcement.

For one thing, handset manufacturers such as Asus, HTC and LG are already behind the initiative, while the fact it's a clean break, without backwards compatibility to the current Windows Mobile 6.5.3. (or Windows Phone Classic as it becomes), means it should be able to compete with the likes of Android and iPhone OS.

There's still plenty developers don't know about the technology, beyond the fact that it uses .Net, Silverlight and the game-focused XNA platform.

Notably, there's uncertainly about whether they will be able to write native/C++ applications.

We expect some of this knowledge to be revealed during a series of sessions at Microsoft's Game Developer Day tutorials at the Game Developer Conference.

However, according to Microsoft's Charlie Kindel, the main brain dump of Windows Phone 7 information is planned for the web-focused MIX10 conference in Las Vegas from 15-17th March, which seems a bit odd considering the number of mobile game developers who will be at GDC.

Maybe, with Windows Phone 7 devices not expected until the winter, Microsoft's trying to control the initial flow of information.

In the meantime, you can follow and interact with Charlie Kindel on Twitter via @WP7dev and using the #wp7dev tag.

[source: MSDN blog]