Ever since the announcement of Microsoft’s portable media player, the Zune HD, there’s a certain question that lingers in my mind, will be able to directly compete with Apple’s media player, iPod(for the rest of this post, I’ll be referring to the iPod Touch when I say iPod) and iPhone? Will it ever live up to the name the iPhone Killer?
And now I can perfectly answer it as YES.
Zune HD(© 2009 Microsoft Corporation)
I think that the technology behind the sleek looking Zune HD is quite mouth watering. First is the OLED display. It gives a significant power savings compared to standard LCD’s that came up with iPod/iPhone. More time to view movies, and it also provides a more crisp display. Multi-touch screen capability is not that innovative but is very welcome. What is truly amazing that it will be powered by Nvidia’s Tegra processors. This gives you the ability to render videos of up to 720p. And having the capability to hook it up with XBOX live, gives it a decent amount of videos to play. Another nice ability of this Tegra processors is its minimal power consumption. (Read more here “Why The Tegra Chip is so Powerful” )
And that brings me to what more the Zune HD is capable of, a gaming platform. At the early days of iPod/iPhone, I was skeptical of the possibilities of it as gaming platform. But as time passed by, more and more games were able to push the iPod to its limits. Though, hard core gaming is still questionable, it later grew as an casual game platform. But Apple is not Microsoft. Unlike Apple, Microsoft is more experienced in gaming industry that somehow successful with Xbox and Xbox360. But what if Microsoft was able to take advantage of its position as game company? The Zune HD might become a full blown gaming console. But what if everyone will be able to develop applications for the ZuneHD like what Microsoft did with XNA and somehow mimic what Apple did with the AppStore?
You know what did iPhone/iPod achieved that PSP and NDS didn’t? It’s the great community of developers. The playing field is quite different with the two consoles, only big shot game companies were able to make in those two. There were only a few that stood out and the rest was just plain crap. Unlike with the games with iPod/iPhone(though many were considered shovelware) many independent game developers were able to achieve success because they were given a chance to perform and somehow deliver what people want. No offense to Sony and Nintendo, because what people like also changes. More often than not, people like innovation. Innovation is less likely to happen in 100 than in a 10000 people.
Currently Sony and Nintendo are changing tactics, moving content distribution to online means, but the only thing that changed is how they deliver the content, not the content itself. Unlike the AppStore, that features an online content delivery but have more developers making the content. Sometime, those big companies forgot that it’s not the platform that brings in the cash but the mere game itself.
Knowing how sly Microsoft is, it will be no surprise that a SDK(maybe we’ll see something like XNA for ZuneHD) for the ZuneHD will be available to all. I for one, will the first to buy this device if it happens. And certainly be developing on it.
Reizen's Loft 