Today, Microsoft officially announced the Zune brand and the first Zune device, a 30GB digital media player. The Zune features a built-in FM tuner that displays the name of the song being played, a 3-inch screen, preloaded content from various record labels. But probably its most interesting feature is its abilitily to perform wireless Zune to Zune file sharing.
The world's largest software maker revealed that the Zune media player, which will be built by Toshiba, will be available this holiday season in the United States together with an iTunes competitor: The Zune Marketplace, which works with the Microsoft Points program so Zune owners can purchase music online without a credit card.
Microsoft also revealed that rather than paying for individual songs, the Zune Marketplace will also let consumers download as many tracks as they want for a flat fee.
In the movie below at the source, you can see the Zune media player in action for the first time. Also a bunch of pictures of the device in its three color variants: black, white and brown.
This could be fun as they make great tables. Go big or go extinct. Prime your senses for a neural handshake and step into the cockpit of a Jaeger. It is on you to cancel the apocalypse when Pacific Rim Pinball comes to Pinball FX on May 16.
Microsoft just posted the third quarter of its 2024 fiscal financial results. The software maker made $61.9 billion in revenue and a net income of $21.9 billion during Q3. Revenue is up 17 percent, and net income has increased by 20 percent.
Xbox content + services up 62% while hardware down 31%... seems about right with the way they tout you don't need the hardware to play. People can play on their phones or smart tv or other means. I don't hardly play on my consoles directly since getting devices like the logitech g-cloud and ps portal. Which is to also say I have been playing more digital than physical because of these devices.
Too expensive hardware when others offer the same or more for less? Good work, Green Team.
"Despite some early successes for Xbox games on rival platforms, Xbox hardware is down by a massive 31 percent this quarter."
"Without Activision Blizzard, Microsoft’s overall gaming revenue would have actually declined this quarter."
"Xbox content and services would have only been up a single percent without Activision Blizzard..."
"It looks like next quarter is going to be a similar story for gaming at Microsoft, too."
That is crazy... so A/B/K is carrying the whole Xbox gaming.
Oh and Microsoft will be fine. Windows, Office and Cloud are growing with each pc purchase.
As of right now, there are no monopolies in the games industry, and for the sake of the medium as a whole, they never should either.
And yet the biggest tech companies in America are essentially that. They buy up all the small comps only to kill them off and steal what they have, and if they can't buy em they bleed them to death.
They buy IPs not talent. That's why these buyouts never work and the IPs die. Right now it's too expensive to develop games - but I expect that to shift maybe as AI tools can make it easier. The best games have been indie games for awhile as big developers fuck their ips to death with "games as a service" -
This may be cool. I wonder what kind of connectivity it will offer with the 360 if any. 30 GB may be a bit small considering Apple just released an 80 gig iPod, which I'm pretty sure has a larger, brighter screen than the ones that came before. Of course, I've got between 150 and 200 albums and several videos on my 30 gig iPod and it's just past 1/3 full, so maybe all that extra space on the new iPod doesn't matter. Music sharing sounds cool, but how many people will actually take advantage of it? I would like to know how much this Zune costs. Also, why brown?
To me the release of the 80gig ipod is a waste of space i too have a 30gig ipod and it is not half full so 80 would be a waste 30 seems to be just fine. I think that this will be an instant hit and finally put the ipod to rest. also with a set flat rate for music that will surely draw attention away from itunes. I cant wait to get one buy how much does it cost? i just saw the video. take a look at the battery at the start of the video then look at it towards the end it went down to half in that little time hope the battery will be able to beat that of the 80 gig ipod 20hours music 6.5 hours video
I do like the look of this.
Any idea when it's coming out in the UK?
I wonder if it will have its own software with it, like the ipod?
This caught my attention yesterday! It looks pretty cool and has some pretty nice features! Any word on the price yet anyone?