BINGO!

When I think of the game bingo, I think of a room full of seniors with their cards, and those magic marker stamps.  After all it is a staple for the senior crowd.  The high stakes games are at the Indian Reservation where the serious players do more than one card at a time.  And for the kiddy crowd, the ever popular car bingo can pass the hours on a trip (when the Zune battery drains, of course).

However, there appears to be yet another version of this venerable game.  At the South By Southwest conference (SXSW), they decided to turn bingo into a picture game.  The cards had various targets of pictures, and the lower right hand one was "Someone using a Zune."  While the other categories included "Geek girl," "Techy Mom," and "Someone using a Kindle," I think that it's notable that the Zune ended up in the Gadgets column.  Should I point out that a certain player named after a popular fruit didn't make the cut for the card?

XNA Games Studio 3.0 Community Technical preview released

If you know how to program or want to start programming with the slight programming skills you may have, and you want to make some small, fun and cheap to develop games that would work on Zune, Xbox, PC or all 3, then you may be interested in XNA. I would try it myself (I have a good game I want to port from Windows mobile to Zune) but I don't know any programming. There are some things the XNA Team wants you to know before you download though:

• Either Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition and higher (C# language support must be installed), orVisual C# 2008 Express Edition are required to install and run the XNA Game Studio 3.0 CTP.  Visual Studio 2005 SKUs are not supported with XNA Game Studio 3.0 and beyond.  However, you do not need to uninstall Visual Studio 2005 or XNA Game Studio 2.0, as those products will work side-by-side with Visual Studio 2008 and XNA Game Studio 3.0 CTP.
• This current CTP does not enable Xbox 360 game development.  Only Windows and Zune are supported in this CTP.  If you want to build and deploy games for the Xbox 360, you must continue using XNA Game Studio 2.0 for now.
• This CTP doesn't work in 64 bit yet.  We plan to support it before RTM.

Zune XNA Zune Game Video

Following last week's XNA Zune game video posted by Sam, a new video was posted on youtube that shows how cool the Zune pad will be with Zune games that need to move around a lot. Using the pad seems to be extremely natural.Don't you agree?

XNA Zune games from Channel9

Channel9 has posted this video about the XNA framework games running on the Zune. It does crash at one point, but this isn't even out for all Zune users yet, so it doesn't really matter. Hopefully they're cooking up some fun games for XNA, like the "Alien Takeover" game demoed in the video.

The XNA game studio for Zune will be available in a few weeks from now! Let's start the Zune game madness!

Channel 10 demonstrates zune games on video!

Channel 10, a Microsoft video podcast I watch, has just posted a video demonstrating the Zune XNA games and gives some details about when we will be getting games and other things you may have been wondering about the Zune XNA games. They demonstrate the Hexic game for Zune, and they said that there won't be any Zune Wi-Fi sharing for these games. Check the video for more details.

Source

Zune Games: The First Look

Video: XNA Game Running on a Zune

Here's a first video of what XNA Games could look like on your Zune. The Zunepad takes an whole new meaning with this type of games.

Even though Cesar says that "Zune is a wireless music and video player first and foremost.", Zune games will open a whole new market for the Zune, and will also bring a unachieved level of value perception.

I was surprised to hear that yesterday though. Last October, the Big Zune boss himself, said that Zune games were not a top priority...

“Thus far, the market really hasn’t proven out that it is a great scenario. Customer satisfaction with what has been done isn’t that high.”

“I love games and maybe for someone with a 40-minute commute, it might be an interesting scenario,” said Allard. Expanding on his comments of negative customers satisfaction he added: “The other challenge is with the platform. The games that you bought in your fifth generation don’t run with your sixth generation. … The rate of innovation, turnover, and variety of form factors makes it a tricky proposition.

“That said, we have a lot of flexibility and a lot of magical software,” continued Allard. “What we’ve done with XNA is an incredibly portable environment designed to abstract some of the hardware differences. We’ll see where that takes us. We’re always thinking, but the Zune isn’t playing Halo 3 anytime soon.” Source

If we read this again today though...He also said that "XNA is an incredibly portable environnment". We should have listened more carefully and read between lines here...

From istartedsomething, thanks Jay T.

Zune to be getting XNA Games... and Multiplayer Games using Wi-Fi

In the Xbox Keynote at the Game Developers Conference, it has been mentioned that the Zune will be getting XNA Game Studio that can be transferred to your PC, your Xbox and your Zune.

Not many details yet, but that's because this is being blogged during the keynote.

On Joystiq, here's what's posted from the liveblog:

11:05 am PT -- Satchell whips out a Zune (he actually has one) and selects "Zauri", a topdown shooter. It supports custom soundtracks too (what with it being an MP3 player and all). You can take a game from Windows, to Xbox, to Zune, explains Satchell. "We've more than delivered," says Satchell of Microsoft's original XNA vision.

And Major Nelson's Twitter says:

Chris is doing an XNA games on Zune demo 6 minutes ago from web

Also announced XNA games are coming to Zune 6 minutes ago from web

The demo presented shows a person controlling the game with the Zune pad, pausing it, and going back to the music, and then back to the game.

Even more interesting, since the Zune is a Wi-Fi device, you'll be able play multiplayer games. Cool stuff! You'll be able to play games with players on Windows, Xbox and Zune.

 

Source 1, Source 2, Source 3

J Allard Confirms No Zune Games. (Yet)

 

Hey Folks! I have some news but first I would like to introduce myself. My name is Landon and I've been a Zune owner since launch. I'm currently applying to be a guest poster from time to time. I hope you folks dig me and my news!

J Allard has confirmed to GamaSutra that Microsoft has no plans to integrate games into the Zune. He notes that with the number of new MP3 players coming out that it would be hard to make everything compatible and that with new players coming out so often that it would be physically impossible for new players to play older games or vice versa.

Source