Game Devs Weigh In On Windows Phone 7

The mobile games industry has exploded over the past few years, driven largely by titles built for iOS and Android. The Guardian's games blog decided to investigate the pros and cons of Windows Phone 7 as a game development platform while it struggles to catch up to its predecessors. "... the easy portability of code between WP7 and Xbox, plus the wealth of online tutorials, libraries and community support, is a massive advantage, especially for smaller and less experienced teams. ... As with Xbox Live Arcade, the console's downloadable games service, Windows Phone 7 offers a curated experience, which means Microsoft controls the quality of games appearing on the device. ... [Steven Batchelor-Manning of Nerf Games says,] 'The App Hub offers a good peer review system, where other developers are asked to check over your game. This helps filter out both low quality and bug-ridden titles. We are always given a particular quality to aim for. Once it's got past this stage there is also a chance that Microsoft will veto against your game going on the platform. Ultimately, this prevents the market being swamped, but above this, there seems to be a layer of games by big publishers (EA, etc) that just step past the smaller developers in the queue. This is the biggest drawback of the system.'"

Comments

Weird story

[93 Escort Wagon]

To me the article read like a blatant fanboy story, but maybe I'm just jaded.

And then I got to this: "As with Xbox Live Arcade, however, Microsoft is set to run its own games promotions, to help market promising titles. The project kicks off this spring with a Must Have games season, which features six Windows Phone 7 titles, including Angry Birds, Doodle Jump, Hydro Thunder and Plants vs Zombies. "

Sure, those are promising titles - after all, they're already big hits on iOS and Android. But how the heck is this tied to the article's repeated meme regarding Windows/XBox-specific tools, and easy cross-development between XBox Live and WP7? It's certainly unlikely any of them were written in C#.