Microsoft Not Even Bothering to Market the Zune HD to Whet Interest?

The Zune HD is getting good user ratings over at Amazon so far (4.5 out of 5 stars). The Zune HD 32GB model is in a respectable #4 position in Amazon’s MP3 players bestsellers list (behind the iPod touch 32GB, iPod touch 8GB, and iPod classic 160GB). I’m still thinking of buying a Zune HD 16GB model myself in November (more on this later). So, when I saw Joe Wilcox had a review over on Betanews, I hopped over to read it…

Zune HD: The best portable media player you may never buy

In one searing section of Joe’s commentary, he questions Microsoft’s decision to launch the Zune HD with a pitifully small games library (7 games) and asks why Microsoft didn’t port some Xbox arcade games to the Zune HD to bulk up its launch library.

This got me wondering about my own reason for wanting to buy a Zune HD in November. My favorite games on the original Xbox were Project Gotham Racer and its sequel Project Gotham Racer 2. Microsoft is, in fact, porting it to the Zune HD. But, they were apparently unable to finish it before the September 15 launch date. the Zune HD version of PGR is scheduled for a November release. In the meantime, Joe’s article reminded me that I haven’t seen any screen shots or demo videos of PGR ported to the Zune HD. I spent some time searching for something, anything, but only found a second of video in a Zune HD commercial uploaded to YouTube.

You can see what I found in the screenshot above. That’s it. Nothing else. I’m sure there are other PGR fans that are at least curious about PGR for the Zune HD. Heck, like me, they might even consider buying a Zune HD to play PGR. But, Microsoft isn’t even bothering to whet our appetities. What’s the deal there???

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