Microsoft's J Allard has commented that despite the Zune and Xbox products being completely separate entities, they are ultimately supposed to be connected up to the same central network. Video will be a crucial part of this vision and content providers will need to allow MS the creativity to handle all the technical details and marketing on the central network medium.

Even though the Zune and Xbox product brands are separate, they are ultimately meant to connect to the same central network.

The Zune guys have to run really fast. The Windows Mobile guys are on a two-year release cycle. The Xbox team now needs to focus on cost reduction, distribution and quality process. Everyone is on their own cadence. The one thing that transcends all this is the network as the nexus.

If you are in an MP3 aisle, we want to be the connected MP3 player. That’s mainly connecting artist and audience together, mostly around the culture of music. Yes, we’ll do video. Yes, we’ll do games. But the heart and soul of that brand is music.

Xbox is the most connected game experience. When you go down the gaming aisle, you’ll see we can do things others can’t do. We keep hitting on the idea of connections.