Microsoft Will Add Video Games to Zune by July 2008

one

Unruly Member
Veteran
How will they add game capability to this Toshiba-rebranded portable player? Any idea?

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a5G_U4Wv8fZU
Jan. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp., the world's largest software maker, will introduce video games for its Zune music player within 18 months to match features available on Apple Computer Inc.'s dominant iPod.

Peter Moore, a vice president in the company's Xbox video- game business, confirmed the plan yesterday, saying the Zune's large screen will offer a better way to play handheld games. He didn't specify what games would be offered.

``I love the interface, I love the screen,'' Moore said at a dinner with reporters during the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Zune, introduced in November, has failed to take market share from Apple's iPod, partly because the device lacks iPod features such as games and TV programs, said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at JupiterResearch. Exclusive Zune features, including a wireless connection to other Zune devices, don't work very well, he said.

``It's not like the music enthusiasts have been flocking to Zune, and they need to really answer Apple in terms of feature parity,'' said Gartenberg, who is based in New York. ``But they will also have to find ways to differentiate. If all they do is hit parity with iPod, they don't win.''
 
How will they sell any after June. :)
They'll keep the astroturfing up and continue to seed select actual people with essentially "my first MP3 player". If you've no frame of reference, if you've never regularly used a device like that, everything's exciting and great.

That's basically what they'll do. Business as usual.
 
They'll keep the astroturfing up and continue to seed select actual people with essentially "my first MP3 player". If you've no frame of reference, if you've never regularly used a device like that, everything's exciting and great.

That's basically what they'll do. Business as usual.

To be fair to the PA guys, they already said themselves that with the iPhone debut, Zune somehow falls flat.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/2007/01/10
 
$3.28 each would be all Microsoft needs in order to give the Zune good 3D graphics.

Assuming the device is truly a rebranded gigabeat S, at least under the hood, it would be using a Freescale i.MX31 family application processor. Freescale sells the SoC with and without MBX Lite acceleration for $21.84 and $18.56, respectively. gigabeat S uses the chip without the 3D, but Freescale presumably didn't produce two separate chips for such a similar design. The likelihood is that they're the same chip with the MBX Lite core enabled or disabled according to which product the customer wants, so Microsoft might already be equipped to deliver high end gaming graphics.
 
Back
Top