Tuesday, March 4, 2008
(Even More) News on Games
Posted by Adam Krebs in "Zune Talk" @ 08:00 PM
Alright, you're probably getting sick of the games talk by now, but I just had to throw this in there. I've been reading the XNA forums for Zune game news, and have picked up some interesting tidbits. For starters:
- Games can't connect to the internet (so no profiles, no RSS feeds or web browsers)
- The firmware update will be coming when XNA Game Studio 3.0 comes out (beta in Spring, final by Winter '08). It remains to be seen whether we'll have full on-device support with the beta, or whether it'll just be an emulator by then. Says XNA Program Manager Michael Klucher: "XNA Game Studio will take care of doing what you need to set up the Zune for games."
- Further, "The only way that you will be able to play the games on the Zune is by deploying them through XNA Game Studio."
- And "Games cannot run at the same time as Wireless sync." I guess no Multiplayer for now... This was in response to a question about ad-hoc communication with several linked Zunes.
- No TV-Out for games, performance variations between Zune models is negligible (save for Zune Pad, 30's can do everything their newer cousins can)
- Unlike Xbox, a Creator's Club membership ($99) is not required to develop games for Zune
- Games can't be sent over wifi, probably for the same reason firmware updates can't.
