XNA 1.0 was a nightmare to deploy, thats right.
But the GSE part of 2.0 made quite some stuff far more straight forward.
Until DX gets fully replaced by something with an OO design like MDX, I think XNA is far better suited for the common usage than DX, at least to me. Too many "hidden traps" on the DX end to do it as hobby if you want to create a game and not work 12-24 months on the technology first with todays hardware generations and their "behaviors" (lesson learnt from TGEA development. Never had that much frustration thanks to NVIDIA and ATI drivers, not even with B3D). Before I would do such a thing I would use Truevision 3D or even GDK
But the GSE part of 2.0 made quite some stuff far more straight forward.
Until DX gets fully replaced by something with an OO design like MDX, I think XNA is far better suited for the common usage than DX, at least to me. Too many "hidden traps" on the DX end to do it as hobby if you want to create a game and not work 12-24 months on the technology first with todays hardware generations and their "behaviors" (lesson learnt from TGEA development. Never had that much frustration thanks to NVIDIA and ATI drivers, not even with B3D). Before I would do such a thing I would use Truevision 3D or even GDK