Yeah, and for server-side I think ngen is the way to go - then you're really just looking for a way to shorten startup time, and that's perfect. But for someth

Yeah, and for server-side I think ngen is the way to go - then you're really just looking for a way to shorten startup time, and that's perfect. But for something like mobile devices or video games, being able to do a real AOT compilation becomes a lot more interesting. You've only got one or two target platforms to worry about, which mitigates the concern about dealing with different build configurations. And you're dealing with an area that's more constrained in both space and speed, so there's more to be gained from some of the more tenacious optimizations that a C++-type compiler might do.