First Zune Player May Not Do Video

DAPreview has pulled together a few references from newspaper articles and interviews that appear to indicate that Microsoft might not include video playback capabilities on their first Zune media player.

If this is true, it could quite possibly be the most bone-headed maneuver ever for a company professing to create an "iPod killer." While the Zune system's purported emphasis on community and music discovery is interesting (though fraught with peril), the ability to play video files has become de rigeur for higher-end players. Like so much with the Zune brand, we're just going to have to wait and see.

(It's not lost on me, incidentally, that if any company but Microsoft were making these announcements and rumored decisions, no one would care.)