• Zune HD Release and App Porting: The Zune HD was released and reviewed last week. Foundation42 announced that their game WordMonger was ported from iPhone to Zune HD in 12 hours using MonoTouch and XNA.
• Original Game Development: WordMonger was originally written in C# with OpenGL and MonoTouch for iPhone and iPod Touch.
• Conversion with XNA: The conversion to Zune HD with.NET was made possible by XNA Game Studio 3.1 Zune HD extensions. Microsoft didn't use these for its free ad-supported games.
• App Release Details: The iPhone version is expected to be released by Thanksgiving. The Zune HD version has no release date as Microsoft doesn't provide a proper method for third-party app publishing. The official way to share games is to download and install certain software and give the source code to users for manual building and deployment.
• Future Plans: Currently, apps are more like a bonus on the Zune HD. Rumors claim Microsoft will link the device to Windows Marketplace for Mobile when Windows Mobile 7 is ready. The Zune Marketplace remains separate from the Windows Mobile store which is set to open on October 6, 2009.