.jpg "Zune is back from the dead -")
While most of us had written off Zune as a bit of stuff destined to be part of something bigger, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has other plans for the brand.
According to Gadgetsteria, Ballmer has been at the top of the castle strapping Zune's corpse to a lightning conductor in the hope of getting a good spark during the next storm.
Zune has been on life support on the Xbox since 2009, however it has never been updated. In fact many people may never have used it because it gives pay per view type services.
Now the dark satanic rumour mill has manufactured a hell on earth rumour claiming that Balmer wants to set up streaming subscriptions using the Zune brand.
Word on the street is that the service will see the light of day next year, although Microsoft has refused to confirm or deny it.
If it is true, then it seems that Microsoft is finally going to tie a service that people want to the fairly unlucky brand. Certainly it will give Netflix a bit of a scare, and who would have thought Zune could give anyone a scare.
1) movie downloads / streaming on xbox is actually fantastic. instant-on 1080p movies simply can't be beaten, but tying it to payment by microsoft points is insane. No one likes microsoft points, no one likes the way xbox deals with credit cards either. their entire payment back-end needs scrapping and building from scratch
2) zune music marketplace / subscription, whilst not as cheap as icloud, etc, has different goals. Unlimited music on several devices is amazing if you listen to / buy a lot of music. But it's held back by the poor storefront. As nice as the zune client is, it's poor for finding music in the marketplace, and gives no recommendations for similar artists..., other people liked.. and the searching is poor
ultimately, zune is just a name. if it's scrapped and replaced with something new people will still draw comparisons, and still mock it without trying it.
1) movie downloads / streaming on xbox is actually fantastic. instant-on 1080p movies simply can't be beaten, but tying it to payment by microsoft points is insane. No one likes microsoft points, no one likes the way xbox deals with credit cards either. their entire payment back-end needs scrapping and building from scratch
2) zune music marketplace / subscription, whilst not as cheap as icloud, etc, has different goals. Unlimited music on several devices is amazing if you listen to / buy a lot of music. But it's held back by the poor storefront. As nice as the zune client is, it's poor for finding music in the marketplace, and gives no recommendations for similar artists..., other people liked.. and the searching is poor
ultimately, zune is just a name. if it's scrapped and replaced with something new people will still draw comparisons, and still mock it without trying it.