OK, I wouldn't expect an official press release like this from Microsoft head office. But the team in Microsoft Research are (a) keen to promote their language

OK, I wouldn't expect an official press release like this from Microsoft head office. But the team in Microsoft Research are (a) keen to promote their language (people like Don and Brian often help early adopters personally) and (b) supportive of Mono (they've always released a .zip file for Mono at the same time as their Windows installers).