I am trying to make a gaming website. I'm going to start off small with some basic card games. I am wondering if I should use Java (which I have no expierence with) or C# with XNA. I have a lot more expierence with C#.

If I go the XNA route I was thinking about allowing members to register at my website, download the game and install it. Run the game off of Windows (the game will make sure they are registered at the website) and report game stats back to a SQL database that both the game and website share. I am making card games so they need to be multiplayer. I was told I could achive this by using web services with XNA. The web services atually run the game, and tell the client games what the other person did so the screen can be updated.

I've been told on an MS forum this is possible, but how reliable is it? I know nothing about web services except you can use C# to make them. I was told that .Net Remoting had some limitations when comming to heavy loads and processes that can't be executed quickly. Are web services powerfull enough to handle this sort of load?

If not what else do I use? I dont understand yet how online games work but I know there must be an online hosted program some where that actually runs the game and just updates all the clients on what to do without the computers connecting directly togther.

I also want to have a small chat program with each game. Users HAVE to be able to communicate. Can this chat room be made with web services as well? To allow the different players to talk and harrass each other? The web service would need to be powerfull enough to track tons of rooms in the future, as each instance of the game will have its own chat room. When messages from players of "game 1" are sent they should not be placed in "game 2", "game 3", etc... chat rooms. I also would like to support private chat between players so teammates can type without opponents knowing about it. In the end the chat room may turn out to be a pretty tough load, but not in the first few years.

If anyone knows of any tutorials that will help me please let me know. I am unsure how to use web services with XNA or web services to make a chat program. Any basic examples to get me started would be great!

I need to make the right choices now so I don't pay for it later. I can make a card game for windows, I just need help knowing what to do to pull this all togther so I can make a REAL game that can actually be played by different people, etc. Right now I am getting all these different technologies confused.

Thank you very much for the help. I will try to return the favor if I can.

Edit: I plan on making the web service that runs the game and the web service that runs the chat room into two web services. The client machine will connected to a game and chat web service within the same program, this should help a lot with the load on one service.

Other gaming websites like pogo.com and yahoo.com break the same game down in many different game rooms, with a limit on the number of people that can be in one room. Why is this? Does each room have its own instance of the web service to lighten the extream loads they take on with hearly a half million people playing at once?

My website will not be that huge, maybe few dozen players at once, but I still want something that is going to be powerfull. I want something I can grow into incase things got out of control and get bigger than what I expect.