Zune Launch: The Retail Experience

imageA little before 4 p.m. eastern, I became the first person to buy a Zune at the Circuit City in Richmond Heights, Mo. I wasn’t the only one to show interest but so far, most of today’s visitors to the Zune display were there to look, pick up info, chat a bit. I went thinking I’d be daring and go for brown but then thought about its probable visibility in the silver interior of my car and realized black would have to do until something darker comes along. (It’s actually more a matte black then the glossy one thinks of with most players.) The square package is brown, though.
Microsoft lived up to promises of plentiful players but fell down in two other important areas: No Zune Marketplace cards and they shorted the store on accessories, delivering travel kits plus a few adaptors and cables but no home kits, no car kits, both among the featured accessories in Sunday’s CC ad. It’s the opposite of the usual new iPod retail experience — plenty of accessories and few players. The Zune display also needs more work: the players are so protected it’s hard to see them and you can’t pick one up sans extra hardware, making it look much clunkier then the nearby iPods, Zens and the like.

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