Remember the bald, “totally hardcore” guy called J Allard who spearheaded the Xbox 360 launch? Well, he has been shifted to the Zune business and well, he doesn’t think gaming is coming to Microsoft’s media player “anytime soon.”
“I love games and maybe for someone with a 40-minute commute, it might be an interesting scenario,” he said. “Thus far, the market really hasn’t proven out that it is a great scenario. Customer satisfaction with what has been done isn’t that high.” He also mentions the problem of the “platform”, citing differences between generations of devices that will cause backwards compatibility a major problem.
According to this Reuters report, Microsoft is planning on releasing a music and video player by this Christmas season, dubbed the “iPod killer” due to obvious comparisons to Apple’s tremendously popular iPod.
The Microsoft player will, unlike the iPod, allow users to download music and videos over the air; it will also employ the iTunes model, letting users buy individual tracks or whole albums. They also have a number of other things going for it to be a real threat to Apple.
So what’s this got to do with gaming? Apparently, this device was reported far earlier, although it was erroneously reported to be a “portable Xbox”. The main man behind the Xbox 360, J Allard, is behind the development of this “iKiller”; he has been out of the spotlight for quite some time now, and this just might be the reason why.
Microsoft would neither confirm nor deny the Reuters report. But it would be very interesting to see if the world is ready for a Microsoft music/video player.
RSS 2.0 feed
