Microsoft Planning Successor To Zune Service?


Some rumblings at Microsoft regarding the future of their music and video services have been detailed by Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft sleuth extraordinaire. Something called “Ventura” has been tipped as a new “very large scale project” involved in music and video discovery and delivery. It’s clearly not at the consumer stage, and they are probably just working on unified backend services for Windows, Live, and WP7 platforms, but it’s also entirely possible that this work will result in some new consumer products.

The Zune brand and look have been partially left behind; the “Metro” UI has elements from the Zune, but the Zune player itself doesn’t really fit in. Could there be a relaunch of Windows Media Player? That would be funny.

It’s still very early in development, as indicated by Foley’s sources and a job listing that seems to indicate it’s more or less in the planning stages. We’ll keep our eyes open, though.

[via WMPowerUser]