J Allard, one of the leading forces establishing the Xbox 360 for Microsoft, has long-since moved on to the Zune product line. Sarcastic Gamer recently learned Allard is still very much interested in gaming, this time on the small(er) screen. Microsoft announced at GDC ‘08 that XNA is being expanded to allow simultaneous game development across the Xbox 360 and now the Zune media player. Having been working on the initiative for many months without being able to speak about it, Allard was ecstatic to discuss the results of their labors bringing this initiative to its current point.
“We wanted to make sure we kept Xbox brand recognition with respect XNA on Zune so we had several priorities to manage simultaneously.” Allard told a group of reporters at a recent Zune Retreat in the Puget Sound area. “We didn’t want people to think ‘Tetris on the iPod,’ we wanted them to think ‘Xbox 360 in my pocket’ so we knew what we had to do.” he continued.
An assistant passed out XNA-enhanced Zunes running some of the latest XNA projects in development to the reporters present, the press reactions could either be described as “a disaster,” or “perfection” depending on how you looked at them.
Chris Grant from Joystiq asked “Did you guys actually add red LED’s to the Zune to replicate the Xbox 360’s Red Ring of Death? You do know that’s not an endearing look, right guys?”
Kotaku’s Luke Plunkett asked if they were going to ship with noise canceling earphones to “drown out the loud whirring noises.” In the back of the room, a guy from Destructoid (I didn’t get his name) expressed disgust when his Zune got a disk read error exclaiming “These don’t even HAVE disc drives, how’s that even POSSIBLE?!” As for myself, I noticed each time I pressed a button on the interface, the number in the top right of the screen decreased by one. When I asked what the number represented, I was told it was where your current Microsoft Points balance resides, “each key press can be set up as a micro transaction.”
It was at this point that I had realized that they had succeeded. I just hope it doesn’t start spouting racist and foul language when I hook up with a Wi-Fi hotspot and go online.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
8 responses so far ↓
1 Animathias // Mar 14, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Did you have to make the Zune red ringed?
I know the answer to that - “Yes.”
Good article, man.
2 lwelyk // Mar 14, 2008 at 6:18 pm
I fell for this until I actually read the article. X_x
3 mc fragsalot // Mar 14, 2008 at 7:51 pm
*sigh*
4 GREYHUNTERII // Mar 14, 2008 at 7:56 pm
zune kicks ass alright it might be behind apple in the player market but is you looked at the sales of portable media players zune was number 2 in sales YOU GIVE ZUNE A BREAK
5 Sean "rothbart" Workman // Mar 14, 2008 at 10:52 pm
@mc fragsalot: Ha ha… now I know how to get you to come out of the woodwork!
6 Mark // Mar 15, 2008 at 3:47 pm
hmm I guess that guy who got the disk read error doesn’t really know much about how this stuff works. Every computer uses the hard drive abstraction, even with harddrives they abstract to different types of drives. It makes the software easier to work with and makes it work for legacy devices(or in this case means they only need to write one version of the software instead of a different version for the flash and harddrive devices.) Aside from that, XNA for the zune isn’t even in the preview stage yet; give it time.
7 Cube // Mar 16, 2008 at 4:07 am
Zune’s and ipod and other huge storage MP3/media players have Micro drive type hard disk in them.
If they had soild state flash memory they would cost 16 times more.
That is is his disk error, the drive is dying or something else and that is where the “loud whirring noises” are coming from.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdrive
8 Cube // Mar 16, 2008 at 4:12 am
So it is possible these things will have disk failure and they can add red rings if they want.
ipod have disk failure all the time.
Leave a Comment