Creative Teases the Zii, Engadget Already Hates It.

Promoted as “Stemcell Computing” chip, the Creative Zii was teased today by Creative on creative.com, as well as its own website, Zii.com. EpiZENter picked up the story as well. Michael already knows quite a bit about it, but this is a really big deal from what he can tell us:

The chip has been top secret at Creative’s headquarters for some time now, and it looks to be one of the biggest projects Creative has invested in. We can’t reveal too much more about the chip right now and we don’t want to spoil it for Creative. Just know this is completely different from their X-Fi audio chip and it will be used in a variety of upcoming products.

From Michael’s as well as what little information I could gather from the Zii site, Creative may be launching a few things:

• Audio processing chip (to rival SigmaTel and Texas Instruments. The Zen X-Fi is powered by a SigmaTel chip)
• Portable media device chip- this one is intriguing. Creative’s subsidiary 3D Labs already has a few of these out. They’ve also demoed a fairly impressive GPS-enabled device.
• A combination of the two that include X-Fi- Creative will be launching many upcoming products (see Michael’s quote above) and an X-Fi enabled portable device chip could easily fit into a new player.
• Something out of left field (it is Creative)

Engadget obviously already hates it. Despite no actual product announcements, images, or demonstrations, they have proclaimed it the end of Creative. For the second time (see their brief on the Zen Moo), Creative apparently has “gone off the deep end” and ripped the Wii’s logo off. Apparently they feel as if rounding the two i’s is a complete ripoff. Not like their beloved fruity company completely stole the Zen UI or anything. Seriously Engadget? Go find an iPhone to lick or something.

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