Microsoft Defense Force

Concept Render of Zune 3

Many XBOX hopefuls have been eagerly awaiting the announcement of an XBOX related handheld gaming system. Rumours and speculation about this has been floating around the tubes for quite some time now – however, nothing has ever been confirmed or ever materialised. It would seem the obvious thing to do considering that both Nintendo and Sony are battling it out in the handheld arena from a gamers point of view (with Sony being pounded over and over and over and over again), but we understand that this may not be the right time to enter the handheld market to begin with. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why.

Recently, an article over at the Kotaku Towers have pointed out a job posting over at Microsoft’s website. The post is looking for a User Experience Designer, and states that the successful applicant will be working on the “Zune Xbox”, amongst other things. Lets remember a few things here. A User Experience Designer largely deals with the way we, as users of the system, interact both physically and psychologically with the system in question. It’s their job to ensure that it’s easy to do the things we want to do, and don’t see the things that we don’t need to know or see.

The individual who has posted this vacancy probably works in a back office somewhere in the Human Resources department, and has NO interest or understanding what was required from the available position. Hence the term “Zune Xbox”. It could be similar to Microsoft posting a vacancy for a Software Engineer for the XBOX LIVE infrastructure, but the post being published by Human Resources as a “Xbox connector togetherer“.

Know whats right – there is currently no such thing as the XBOX Portable or similar from Microsoft as an official announcement.

If this however, DOES turn out to be the XBOX Portable in some way, then i’ll be damned.

Click this link to read the article at Kotaku. This link will open in a new window.