Game maker Foundation 42 is one of the first developers to get an app working on the Zune HD, and it looks like it wasn’t too difficult a process, taking only 12 hours. This is a good sign.
The game, a fun little word puzzler called Wordmonger, is already available on several platforms (iPhone, various desktop OSes) but using the XNA, Foundation 42 was able to port it over to the Zune HD. Now that we know it’s not an incredibly difficult process, we’ve got to question Microsoft’s decision to lock the Zune HD to free, first-party apps. Right now, to get Wordmonger onto your Zune HD, you have to download the developer kit and use another piece of software, rather than just heading into the Zune Marketplace and downloading the app.
We hope Microsoft is questioning the decision too—the Zune HD is a really powerful little gadget, and that Tegra chip is capable of some impressive feats. We’d love to see the Zune HD opened up for more developers, and if there’s enough buzz Microsoft might eventually do just that. [YouTube via Twitter]
matt
September 21, 2009 at 9:21 AM
cool!
hope the xna implementation isn’t slow like the xbox one. also hope they will not exclusively use an app store, or will atleast use a peer evaluation system like on the xbox, rather than a couple of guys at the company passing and rejecting apps for silly reasons.
but please please please! let us just copy apps to our device freely like we can with, I dono, our PCs!
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