Microsoft's Zune brand officially announced.......

22/07/06

Microsoft has confirmed the Zune project and the company is 100% ready for the portable music player which will be put under Microsoft's new Entertainment & Devices Division. The division is headed by Robbie Bach, Allard (Corporate Vice President and Chief XNA Architect), and Bryan Lee (Corporate Vice President and CFO, Entertainment and Devices Division). Microsoft GM of marketing, Chris Stephenson said "Today we confirmed a new music and entertainment project called Zune. Under the Zune brand, we will deliver a family of hardware and software products, the first of which will be available this year. We see a great opportunity to bring together technology and community to allow consumers to explore and discover music together." Zune will be the umbrella brand for a family of software and hardware products that will target various digital entertainment services. Billboard also confirms that the new Zune will offer a Wi-Fi and drive-based storage. Microsoft will implement a new PlaysForSure system for the portable player and too bad you can't use it with Napster, Zongo or any audio service. Guess what? The new Zune is going to have a add-on game pad similar to the Sony Ericsson P800 Bluetooth game pad. Will this device turn out to be basing its social networking capabilities on Microsoft's Live Anywhere platform? Gizmodo reported that Microsoft will let you customize your own Zune when you buy it online. If that's true, it will be really great. There are still a lot of hanging questions and rumors.
via: mobile-whack