Can Microsoft take on the iPod touch with the Zune HD?

New hardware is always exciting. We love to get our hands on sexy new silicon, wrapped in motion sensitive metal, accessed through a bright, glowing, touchscreen window. Microsoft's new Zune HD ticks all those boxes, and the handsome handheld is receiving rave reviews as the media feverishly unboxes it.

But as briefly distracted by high-tech shiny things as we are, the cuckoo effect doesn't last long. As soon as the wrapping is off and the battery is charged, a device like the Zune HD can only seduce today's tech-savvy consumer through its software, and on that front Microsoft appears a little lacking.

Launch day is a big deal for a company, and it takes a huge amount of resources to pull it off. Installing a software ecosystem ready for such a hardware roll out adds a lot of pressure, and although we're quite impatient to see the Zune HD offer up some stiff competition to the likes of the iPod touch it's clearly going to be a while before the software is in place.

Using the iPhone and iPod touch as a reference point (which Microsoft probably won't like, but that's hard cheese, really - the Zune HD is going toe-to-toe against these devices one way or another), it's easy to forget now that the iPhone had been around over a year before the App Store launched, while iPod touch early adopter had almost a ten month wait before the prolific amounts of software finally became available.

Until that point, all these two devices had access to was iTunes - a library of music and video, with a calculator app and email.

But times have changed since Apple launched its iDevices, and we have to wonder if Microsoft could have done more to prepare the ground for the Zune HD's arrival. A successful iPhone developer (who can't be revealed as it's currently working under a non-disclosure agreement) summed up the Zune HD's position very concisely, saying:

"On our part it's totally wait-and-see. The hardware is nice but it's time to jump in only if there's a sales channel, a simple development process and a solid SDK."

Microsoft has offered seven launch games on the Zune Marketplace. They're free, but wrapped in some pretty obtrusive adverts. There has been some talk of more advanced games than this weak collection of puzzle fare, but it seems the handheld industry is still waiting to hear from The Vole about any potential opportunities.

"It's unusual that Microsoft didn't open Zune HD for third-party developers yet," says Andrey Podprigora of iPhone developer A-Steroids. "Making a mobile platform available easily accessible even for small developers has been a proven best practice lately. That was a part of iPhone and iPod touch's success, and Android's too, I guess.

"Right now, Microsoft handpicks the developers and works with them on a case-by-case basis, making the products free for customers. In general, we're interested in developing games for Zune, but it's not a platform [developers] can easily get to."

The web is chock full of app stores these days, with every manufacturer, carrier and software company putting together on-device portals. Indeed, it now seems Microsoft has three, and it's not all that easy to tell the difference between them.

The Zune clearly has this new Zune Marketplace, which is a tad barren at the moment. But there's also the new Windows Marketplace for WinMo handsets and, of course, Xbox Live.

There's talk of integration between Zune Marketplace and Xbox Live, but the purpose and level of this integration needs some serious clarification. Are Zune HD users going to be getting their video content from Xbox Live, and their games from Zune Marketplace? Will applications be compatible between Windows Marketplace and Zune?

Microsoft is in a unique position to amalgamate its digital presence and bring the living room, handheld and telephonic worlds together under a single app store umbrella, but from what we can tell it's adopting its usual policy of keeping things as confusingly separate and uncommunicative as possible.

A powerful, portable component for the Xbox 360 would be a superb way for Microsoft to endear the Zune HD to consumers, but some sloppy, forced, over-promotional spillover between the two systems will do neither any real favours.

"It's something we're monitoring, but on our side it's too early to say we want to develop on [the Zune HD]," says French developer Bulkypix. "It's a gameplay platform, apparently, but Microsoft hasn't communicated too much on that. We need to see how games can be distributed and how big the market is."

It seems evident that, for the time being at least, Microsoft is keeping the Zune HD behind closed doors. Apple quietly revolutionised the industry when it offered a free iPhone software development kit (SDK) to anyone who wanted it - something Sony has almost follow suit with by cutting 80 per cent off the price of the PSP's SDK - and it seems Microsoft is still uncomfortable with that notion.

That the majority of third-party developers aren't being brought into the Zune HD circle - even though the device is already on sale - points to either a long term plan for the Zune HD, in which Microsoft hopes to establish a userbase before inviting the software developers to the party, or the similarity to the iPod touch is simply too much for the company to stomach, and games aren't going to be a priority.

It's hard to believe that Microsoft would be so short sighted (isn't it?), so we can only hope that interest doesn't wane - both from consumers and from software developers - before the Zune HD has a chance to fly.

We've seen perfectly capable platforms come and go due to a lack of good software before now, and consumers really don't need another MP3 player, so let's hope the Zune HD begins to shine.

The window of opportunity closes quickly.