J Allard: No games on Zune anytime soon

Microsoft’s iPod rivalling Zune player will not be housing games in the near future as they don’t offer good customer satisfaction”.

That’s according to former Xbox strategy manager J Allard, who is heading up the Zune project for Bill Gates.

Speaking to Reuters after the launch of a new, updated range of Zune players, Allard said: "I love games and maybe for someone with a 40-minute commute, it might be an interesting scenario. 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. 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.

"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.”

Last month, Apple boss Steve Jobs unveiled the Classic iPod, which was described by its creators as being perfect for playing iPod games”.