Martin: Unfortunately, Thomas has been ill this week so I will be talking to myself. I thought I would cover a couple of the recent tech stories that may or may not become big, both concerning Microsoft.
Zune HD – Microsft have announced their Zune Touch, oops I mean Zune HD. I don’t think they would mind me saying that this is aimed squarely at the iPod touch. Starting with the bad, its quite ugly. It seems to lack the attention to removing the unsightly visible details that makes the iPod look so good. Those exposed screws would never appear on an iPod and they have been banished from the MacBook since they moved to “Unibody” construction. It looks like the XBox 360 is set to be a one hit wonder in MS’s industrial design back-catalogue.
Moving on to better things. The OLED screen is almost certain to appear in the next iPod touch too, and digital radio is a nice addition. The main story about the Zune HD though is the integration with XBox Live. Suddenly, when it comes to online video iTunes and the iPod / Apple TV have a major rival. I presume there will be apps and games aplenty too.
I freely admit to being a massive Apple fan, I “get” their ideology and love the products, but I wouldn’t swap my XBox 360 for an Apple TV anytime soon. I’m sure many others feel the same too. Apple need to be careful about this development so that MS don’t steal the living room from under their noses.
XBox Motion Controller – Its the E3 games conference next week and one of the biggest rumours surrounding it is that MS will add motion control to the XBox 360 as an attempt to combat the Wii. The system will use a camera to track movements in 3d which will, apparently make it awesome.
The most significant thing about this rumour that has been running for a while is that it will definitely happen. How do I know this you ask. If you click the link at the start of this story to look at the Daily Telegraph story you might recognize most of the lines in it, especially the one about flying a fighter plane is very similar to one that was printed in the Sunday Times on the same day. Now, this makes me think that Microsoft don’t have a leak, they are giving briefings to the press about this. I will be very surprised if we don’t see it at E3.
As for the device itself. I am optimistic that it won’t be too much of a Wii wannabe and will bring some motion control to the more serious games. If it does achieve that as well as the inevitable “family” games that will come along with it then this could turn to be very significant couple of weeks for the future direction of Microsoft.
If anyone feels like taking the role of Thomas and telling me I am wrong, and more importantly why please do so in the comments.
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