Zune Gets Creative With XNA

The media portion of the upcoming Zune HD is something of considerable consideration recently, as many people are wondering if the upcoming PMP will strive to defeat the iPod Touch, or even start a fight with it. And, as we've seen recently, Microsoft seems pretty determined to get the ball rolling on developers working with their peripheral. But, one question that hadn't been pressed much, was how the future games of the Zune HD could be developed and implemented.

Microsoft's road map for a lot f things some times looks pretty convoluted and haphazard, and even as "we see Microsoft try to combine their products," we can still see that Microsoft might be trying a bit too hard to integrate everything, without actually showing any of the results (as of yet). This time, we're seeing the development process for gaming on the Zune device, and by that, we mean any Zune device. Of course, the Zune HD hasn't released yet, but that doesn't mean that the XNA Zune game development cannot be tuned to create outstanding platforms for the upcoming media device.

Indie Games, which is also hopefully responsible for the development of more casual games that will span the three screens of Microsoft domination, is also part of the XNA Creators Club. So, we can see that Microsoft is gearing up for some strong media presence, well outside the boundaries of their Xbox juggernaut, but will it matter in the long run? Can developers create games strong enough to compete with some of the titles available in Apple's App Store? We certainly hope so, because the Zune HD is something we don't want to see fade away without ever really getting a chance to shine.

[via XNA]