Microsoft officially launched the Zune today with a press release, and a bunch of photos. All of the specifications are pretty much what Engadget and others have been reporting for weeks, but the one big surprise is the color lineup: white, black, and brown. Yes brown. Engadget has some more details:

They also finally let slip the screen res — an unsurprising QVGA — and some better news on the codec front: the Zune supports h.264, MP3, AAC and WMA. As for ballyhoo, wireless Zune-to-Zune sharing is where the real action is at, and it works pretty much like we’ve been hearing: you can share a full-length track with a friend, and they’ve got three times to listen to it over a three day period, after which they can flag the song for purchase on the Zune Marketplace — unless they’re an unlimited “Zune Pass” subscriber, of course. You can also share playlists and pictures with your buddies, along with what we suppose are “unprotected” homemade recordings.

You might remember that I got the Creative Zen Touch for Christmas two years ago, and it has worked great for me ever since. I still use it every day. But two years is a long time in the world of technology! A brand new Zune, with it’s color screen (my Zen is just blue), video, and wireless capabilities (among other things) might be in order don’t you think?

The white one would match my Xbox 360 quite nicely!

Read: Engadget