Not too long ago, you may remember, that Microsoft penned a deal with a fairly established mobile game developer by the name of Kabam. That was in June 2014.
And as part of that agreement, the developer was expected to release some of its more popular games on both the Windows and Windows Phone platforms. These titles were already a hit on competing platforms Android and iOS, and some of the games part of the agenda were:
- Dragons of Atlantis
- Fast and Furious 6: The Game
- Heirs of the Dragon
- The Hobbit: Kingdoms of the Middle-Earth
Out of these, only Fast and Furious 6: The Game made its way to Microsoft’s platform, and basically the company dawdled on its promise to ports its games to the operating systems.
Even the game above was released some five months after the initial announcement.
But the latest development on this now is that Kabam has pretty much abandoned the Windows Phone platform in order to focus on Apple and Android mobile devices. As stated:
“Kabam is now concentrating development on AAA quality games for Apple and Android mobile devices and has decided not pursue development for Windows Phones. Kabam is concentrating its resources on the biggest market opportunity, which is Apple and Android devices worldwide.”
Honest, if harsh.
It’s a vicious circle really, the classic case of chicken and the egg, deciding on what should come first. Developers want a large ecosystem to launch their apps and games on, and buyers want the availability of apps to move to a platforms.
And considering how even a company as big as Microsoft is struggling with this, one can only imagine where this leaves the smaller players like BlackBerry, Firefox OS, Sailfish and Ubuntu Touch.
