Hello XNA
I’m done with the first chapter. Professional XNA Programming jumps right in to things without a lot of explanations… It’s not bad, but there are some annoying bits like the screenshots and text not being fully updated for the latest version of XNA Game Studio. There must have been a pretty long publishing lead time.
Anyway, chapter 1 explains the basic structure (Initialize, Update Draw) and content pipeline of games developed with XNA. It also shows how to load 2D textures and take input from the gamepad and keyboard.
Here is a happy fellow that you can move around the screen:
Download HelloXNA (source code)