News Bits: Whoops! Sony Aids Xbox 360 Development

Written by Erin Barker

Friday, January 2. 2009 at 11:55 AM EST Post a comment

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In an embarrassing turn of events, it appears that Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE) accidentally helped Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) develop the Xbox 360, by hiring IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) to design the cell processor for its Playstation 3 gaming console without a noncompete clause.

IBM engineers involved, David Shippy and Mickie Phipps, revealed this in their new book, The Race for a New Game Machine. After taking on Microsoft as an additional client, Sony's R&D money "was spent creating a component for Microsoft to use against it," The Wall Street Journal says. Furthermore, Microsoft actually received the chip before Sony did. Awkward!

But there's plenty of humiliation to go around. As alluded to in the comments here, Z2K9 struck on New Year's Eve, when thousands of Microsoft Zunes suddenly stopped working. [Ed. note: Thousands (?!) of Zunes have been sold? Really?]

The older 30-Gbyte version of the Zune was apparently affected by the leap year, frustrating Zune owners around the world and bringing devastation on New Year's Eve parties everywhere. ("This was a major inconvenience," posted "JaximFlash," on the Zune Website. "I have 2 Zune 30s and I had made a playlist of songs to play during a New Year's Eve party.")

Microsoft is working now to get them running again, suggesting that users "allow the battery to fully run out of power before the unit can restart successfully. Then simply ensure that your device is recharged, then turn it back on."

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