I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again; we need the ability to purchase and download games directly from the Zune software. This notion that things for the Zune can exist outside of its user friendly ecosystem is crazy. It’s pretty much the Audiobooks fiasco on a similar scale. I shouldn’t have to wait for Microsoft to add more games, and it shouldn’t take an effort to install them myself either. Marketplace level support is crucial if they ever want Zune’s gaming ability to grow beyond just being a useful novelty.
Another one of the stranger things is how they’re organized under Games menu in the Zune. Why can’t we have a text based twist effect for different categories, like Single Player and Multiplayer or Puzzles and Adventure? What we get now is just a basic screen with games sorted in alphabetical order and that’s all fine and good, but it makes me feel like games were an afterthought, a feature they added just so they could say they did it too. (Which my be true.)
Consumer’s love choice and they love it even more if they don’t have to make an effort to provide choice. Not only should we get Marketplace access to games, we should get access to games that are not made by Microsoft. Right now it’s a giant mess. If I want more games I head to either the publisher’s site or one of the Zune based forums for more information on how to get it. This isn’t intuitive and it isn’t what the Zune brand was created to do.
Overall the implementation of the games on Zune isn’t as terrible as it could be, but why settle for that? Why not make it the best it could be? You’ve done well by music fans Microsoft and this year’s reviews prove that, (when most sites agree that Zune is a good alternative platform, like say Davit Pogue, you know you’ve hit the right tune). One of my favorite things from the “West Wing” show was how whenever anyone was wasting time someone encouraged them to pick it up, in that spirit I’d like to say the following: Zune Team video works fine, and music works great but games support sucks. Go do a job.