Microsoft, or at least its Zune Support Twitter account, appears to now be saying the Zune player is not dead. Or at least that notice of its death was premature.

That's after a message had gone up on Zune's support site Monday saying Microsoft "will no longer be producing Zune players."

The link to the page with that message now goes to a "page not found" message.

The situation gets even more bizarre in a series of tweets between Zune Support and a Twitter user who goes by the handle WP_DownUnder, as noticed by the website Liveside.net.

In that exchange, WP_DownUnder tweeted Zune Support, saying he was sad the Zune hardware devices are no more, referencing the support page message about Microsoft ceasing production of the player. Zune Support replied: "I think there may have been an error. There doesn't appear to be any pages on Zune.net that reference that."

WP_DownUnder then pointed out that less than 24 hours ago, the link to the support page had led to a message saying Microsoft would no longer be producing Zune players, and that he had a screenshot of that page. Zune Support then replied: "That site was added to the Zune website in error. I apologize for any confusion that caused."

WP_DownUnder then said "WOW that's a big error!" and asked for clarification. Zune Support replied that "we do not have any further info to provide about that issue."

[Update 8:28 a.m.: Here's a link to that screenshot and Twitter conversation from WP_DownUnder, who commented below.]

That's on top of another strange series of events Monday when Microsoft pulled references to the Zune HD devices from the Zune site, then said that that was a mistake.

So is the Zune player officially dead or not? And what's with the bizarre back and forth?

We have an inquiry in to Microsoft and will update if we hear back.