Microsoft XNA Compiled Format

File Format
Name	Microsoft XNA Compiled Format
Ontology	Electronic File Formats Serialization Microsoft XNA Compiled Format
Extension(s)	.xnb

XNB files are created by Microsoft XNA and distributed with many games. XNB is a general serialization format capable of representing arbitrary .NET objects, but there are common definitions for textures, sound samples, 3D models, fonts, and other game data. XNB files may use LZX compression (referred to as the Xbox XMemCompress format).

Identification

Files begin with ASCII characters "XNB", followed by "w", "m", or "x".

Specification

Microsoft provides XNB format documentation and sample code (archived).