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Microsoft entrtainment boss Robbie “The Terminator” Bach reckons there are “cautionary tales” to learn from PSP, and he wants to apply them to Zune.
“The PSP is a reasonably successful product at the profit-and-loss level,” he said in this Venture Beat interview. “But as a product concept, there are cautionary tales to learn from it. While it is good at producing audio, it’s not a good music player because it doesn’t have local storage (except for flash memory slots). You can’t keep your music there. It has a beautiful screen, but you can only get the video under the Universal Media Disc format. That format hasn’t been successful.
“On a game level, it has done well. But even there, it is mostly PlayStation 2 ports. There isn’t much original content. When you do these devices, they can’t be pretty good at a lot of things. They need to be great at what they do. Zune is a great music player. We have local storage, a marketplace, the social network. We didn’t do video right out of the gate because you want to do those things in a high-quality way. Same thing in the gaming space. It is technically possible to do games on there. But you aren’t going to see a broad gaming effort from us until we sort that through and have it figured out. I don’t think of Zune like the PSP. The PSP is a game player that also does video and music. We think of Zune as a broad-based entertainment device.”
Loads more through there. Fill your Friday.
Viewing 12 responses
Psychotext said:
The PSP also sells… unlike the Zune. =)
patlike said:
Is it even out in the UK yet? I had a play with one at CES this year. They’re a bit… odd.
Blerk said:
Let’s see you compare the Zune to the iPod, then. Or the iPhone, even. You know… something that’s a bit more like a Zune.
CastellanSpandrell said:
WTF? Comparing the PSP to the Zune???
Point 1. The PSP is not primarily a music player
Point 2. You don’t have to rely on UMD for video
Point 3. The majority of content has not been ported from PS2
Point 4. Twat
mart said:
Yep, completely pointless comparison. If anything’s a cautionary tale here, it’s Zune’s ’success’ story.
patlike said:
Castellan - hahaha
wz said:
mart: I thought that was the “illusionary tale”, but well.
DrDamn said:
35 million units sold = reasonably successful? How many Zune’s have been sold then?
Blerk said:
35.
wz said:
Blerk: Including those sold to MS employees who’d get a full refund?
EdwardTivrusky said:
Is this the build up to the depseration announcement?
Xbox360 & Zune uber connectivity?
lolz
Robo_1 said:
A lazy and completely daft comparison.
He’s right in the respect that PSP is currently under supported games wise, and the music features are really half baked (IMO Sony really dropped the ball with the slim and light, they could have done so much more with a redesign), but going after PSP with the Zune is a nice way of dodging their real competition in that area: Apple.