I see Xamarin are adding VS support to their free 'Starter' version:

http://blog.xamarin.com/microsoft-and-xamarin-expand-global-partnership/

Something in the right direction at least :-}

>>Thanks Rick. I had a feeling I should have said 'looks very interesting' rather then 'looks very interesting'.
>>
>>At first glance $1k/pa for Xamarin didn't look too bad - then I noticed it was 'per platform' :-{
>
>And that's per year, per platform, per developer. It's a subscription and you can't use after the year is up...
>Insane that people go for this... It maybe an awesome tool but at those prices there's no way unless I have a specific project that requires it and they are paying for the license.
>
>+++ Rick ---
>
>
>>
>>>>VS2015 looks *very* interesting. The idea of being able to develop Android apps looks very interesting.
>>>
>>>I think you'll likely be pretty disappointed by the cross platform support from Microsoft. It either means you have to use the rather very expensive Xamarin platform for native code, or Cordova to build 'cross-platform' applications. The former is pretty nice but the pricing makes it non-starter in my book. The free Xamarin community edition is a joke really in terms what you can build with it and even the lowest level paid option doesn't support Visual Studio integration. The latter involves tooling for Cordova that's built into Visual Studio which at this point at least is very rough. I think there are much better solutions out there that make this easier.
>>>
>>>Cross platform remains a difficult nut to crack for vendors in general - I don't think there are any really solid solutions available for this today.
>>>
>>>
>>>+++ Rick ---
>>>
>>>>What I've read implies that the community edition has all the functionality of the current VS2013.
>>>>
>>>>VS2015 looks *very* interesting. The idea of being able to develop Android apps looks very interesting.
>>>>
>>>>Any idea of what VS options will be included in MSDN subscriptions ?
>>>>
>>>>>Community Edition is free up to five developers provided your company makes less than $1 million US per year. It is basically Pro edition. The big thing about that is extensions will work.
>>>>>
>>>>>>As I read it 'Visual Studio Community' is free (for up to 5 developer teams) and offers more the VS Express....