OXCGN Testing the Waters: Zune HD & Gaming

Project Gotham Racing & Audiosurf sign of games to come…

by AXIS of Reality:

©2009 Alex Baldwin

[ED: Update:
Well, it seems within 24 hours OXCGN's predictions have come true! Microsoft has just released the update to XNA Game Studio bringing it to 3.1 that adds Zune HD support and SDK, including access for developers to the Tegra cores, accelerometer and multi-touch functionality. In just a few hours a drawing app was demoed by a developer that indicates the ease, power and speed of development that has made XNA such a hit for Live Arcade is still intact and ready for Zune HD.

Bring on the endless Snake clones! (and some great new indie games too!)]

Well, the Zune HD is finally available, thought unfortunately confined to the US for now. While Microsoft has been uncharacteristically secretive regarding gaming on the miniature powerhouse, details are finally starting to emerge (spoiler: Project Gotham is back!).

As most people interested will know, the Zune HD is one of the first devices to use Nvidia’s new Tegra chipset. Essentially, the Tegra is an entire system on a single chip. It can handle processing, 3D rendering, video, sound and everything needed for the modern media player (and more!). Especially impressive is HD video capabilities that allows the Zune HD to play back or output 720p video

Of course, the screen itself isn’t HD being confined to 480 x 272 resolution (same as the PSP) due to its size, but sit it in the dock and plug into your HDTV for some HD video up to 14mb/s (for reference, the iPod Touch doesn’t do HD at all and is only really happy up to around 2mb/s)!

Of course, it would be a waste to some to have all that raw power and only use it for video. As such, 3D gaming is the next to step up and take its place in the spotlight.

Personally I’ve been more and more impressed over time as gaming on the iPod Touch and iPhone has matured into a serious handheld contender with high quality titles such as Modern Combat: Sandstorm, Hero of Sparta and Assassin’s Creed: Altair’s Chronicles. Visually they have been between the DS and PSP, but are now beginning to be favourably comparable to the PSP.

The iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch 3rd Gen are raising the potential even further with new, faster processors the can support advanced graphical features such as water refraction and reflections, bump-mapping and real-time shadows.

Now bring on the Zune HD, with numerous cores similar in essence to the PS3‘s architecture of parallel processing with Nvidia posting specs of the Tegra powering it that aren’t all that far below the original Xbox such as 64 million polygons per second and anti-aliasing support. Simply put, the Zune HD is a beast. And a remarkably tiny one at that.

All this discussion would be pointless though if Microsoft were going to ignore the potential but luckily the boffins at Redmond have been busy and released a press statement announcing – wait for it – Project Gotham Racing: Ferrari Edition, Vans Sk8: Pool Service and my personal most wanted: Audiosurf Tilt Edition.

It’s great to hear the Project Gotham series is alive and kicking and will be one of the launch games for the Zune HD gaming service.

While not much is known about Vans SK8, I’m very excited about Audiosurf: Tilt Edition. For those yet to experience the multi-award-winning Audiosurf indie game for PC I recommend you jump onto Steam and grab it right now. In a nod to Rez, Audiosurf combines music and visuals to create a seamless trance-like experience with simple gameplay based around the music playing.

You can use any music track on your computer which the game then analyses and creates a neon, floating road out of with every nuance of the music affecting the shape, height, speed and bumps in the track.

The player then guides their hovercraft along with collecting coloured blocks that are timed with the music to make combos in a deceptively simple manner that can change dramatically from a lovely Sunday drive in a classical piece to a keyboard-breaking challenge in a hard rock song. It’s damn addictive, and damn fun since you’re literally ‘playing’ your own music.

This sort of game is ideal for a handheld, and the pairing with the Zune HD is flawless – able to access all your songs to make into tracks that never gets old as you never run out of new levels as long as you don’t run out of music.

The iPod Touch and iPhone have been difficult in this regard as Apple placed many locks on accessing other data on the device by third-party apps so they couldn’t access your media. Audiosurf could be the ideal game for a media device and thanks to the Tegra chip should look absolutely fantastic.

And there’s more good news for 360 owners. As Microsoft announced at E3 this year, the Zune Marketplace will soon be available on Xbox Live integrated into the 360 interface. You’ll be able to download all the music, videos and games straight from Xbox Live onto your Zune HD and sync them between your 360, PC and Zune HD.

While the Zune Marketplace on Xbox Live has been confirmed for numerous countries, so far the Zune HD itself is only available in the US but considering the time and money Microsoft has poured into it, we can expect more international releases starting early 2010. eBay is your friend if you want to import as soon as you can though (I sure am).

While it’s all well and good, I’m sure a lot of you out there are already flicking through your wallet wondering how much these downloadable games will cost. After all, Microsoft aren’t known for free DLC and have paid subscriptions to Xbox Live, so it’s not unreasonable to expect the worst.

The Zune HD itself is priced very well (below the equivalent-storage iPod Touch despite Tegra and gorgeous OLED screen) so would the pricing on these high-grade games make up the rest of the cost? Get ready for a surprise.

The price of all Microsoft’s Zune HD apps is:

FREE.

Say that to yourself a few times. Got a nice ring to it, yes?

The only major question left is third-party support. While the Zune HD is still in its early days (well, it’s first day right now as I write this), so far Microsoft have only mentioned first-party and partnered third-party content.

The status of the Zune SDK and connection with XNA Game Studio (which previous Zunes supported) is unknown, and for the development and support of games and apps on the Zune HD wide-open availability of an SDK would make sense in a similar model to XNA.

For now they seem to be keeping quiet with only first-party stuff on the horizon, but have mentioned a possible plugin with the Windows Marketplace when Windows Mobile 7.0 is released in 2010 to prevent an overlap between 2 different appstores for Microsoft’s mobile devices.

Only time will tell as to the possibilities of the Zune HD as a gaming device alternative and the power of Tegra, but one thing’s for certain: Microsoft is onto a winner here with an incredible device and it’s up to them to make its potential a reality.

Zune HD Features Overview

Screen: OLED, 16:9 aspect, 3.3 inches, 480 x 272 pixels – perfectly suited for movies and gaming with a widescreen format, the screens is especially awesome being OLED, the successor to LCD that uses much less power and requires no backlight as the pixels themselves glow.

This means amazing colour contrast and where black actually is black instead of the greyish tinge of regular LCDs that still have a backlight under black pixels.

• Chipset: Nvidia Tegra APX2600 – while there are detailed specs sheet available for those interested, most important is that it supports OpenGL-ES 2.0 for advanced graphical effects, it can process lots of geometry, textures, vertex and pixel shaders, etc at once as well as having seperate cores for individual tasks such as sound and video.
• Capacity / Colours: 16gb (black) or 32gb (Platinum). Other colours such as green, red and blue are available as ‘Zune Originals’ from Microsoft that include laser-cut artistic or game designs (eg: Halo 3 ODST logo) engraved on the back plate.
• Battery Life: music up to 33 hours, video up to 8.5 hours. Charge time approx. 3 hours via PC, 2 hours via AC.
• Wireless: 802.11b/g Wi-Fi
• Video Output: Up to 720p (1280 x 720) video to an HD screen at 14mb/s via Composite or HDMI (requires HD dock).
• Audio Output: analog (3.5mm headphone jack) or optical (via HD dock)
• Audio Support: WMA, WMA Lossless, MP3
• Video Support: WMV, MPEG-4, H.264
• Image Support: JPEG

Other features: FM / HD radio, internet browser, social (Facebook, Twitter), apps, games, Zune Store, 360 connectivity, wireless syncing

©2009 Alex Baldwin

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Filed under: 3rd Party Games, Console gaming, Editorial, Game Industry News, GameBanter, Handhelds, Hardware News, Industry News, Microsoft Games, Xbox 360, Xbox 360 News, XboxLive Marketplace Tagged: | 360, Audiosurf, ds, HDTV, iPhone, iPod, iPod Games, ipod touch, iTouch, nvidia, OXCGN, Project Gotham, Project Gotham Ferrari, PSP, Tegra, Xbox 360, zune, zune apps, zune games, zune HD, zune marketplace