Back n February, Microsoft announced that they will be acquiring Xamarin, the company that makes the popular cross platform development tool for Visual Studio. This new doesn't come as much of a surprise as Xamarin has been working closely with Microsoft's Visual Studio team in the past. Fast forward to the second day of Build 2016 and while Microsoft did briefly tease Xamarin up on stage yesterday, today the company is officially announcing that Xamarin will now be included with Microsoft's Visual Studio IDE (starting with VS2015 update 2 which was announced yesterday)

Xamarin is now FREE for the first time with the Visual Studio 2015 Update 2. #Build2016 pic.twitter.com/wUKzpDst31

— Windows Developer (@windowsdev) March 31, 2016

Before today's announcement, a Xamarin license has varying costs depending on the business size but today, Microsoft announces that the Xamarin plugin is now available to everyone for free. This free version of Xamarin will work with all version of Visual Studio ranging from the free VS Community edition all the way to VS Professional with MSDN.

Beyond making Xamarin free, Microsoft also announced that they will be open sourcing the Xamarin runtime and they also shared plans to develop an iOS Emulator that will work on Windows 10. Download the latest Visual Studio 2015 Update 2 here