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Last October, Microsoft launched its Windows Phone 7 platform to a favourable critical reception and decent sales. The first range of handsets from manufacturers such as HTC, LG and Samsung shipped a respectable 1.5m units in the first six weeks of release, and of course, there's now a partnership with Nokia to (eventually) boost device numbers.
But with Microsoft cagey on updating handset sales figures, I wanted to know how WP7 is fairing as a games platform. Right now, developers seem curious enough about the hardware to start cautiously porting across titles from iOS and Android. The question is, can the community be ready to commit wholly to another platform – especially one with an ambiguous level of consumer uptake? And then there's the Xperia Play lurking on the horizon...
We spoke to several WP7 developers about their experiences with the platform, and where they see things going.
From the outset, it seems there is unanimous agreement on the key strength of Windows Phone 7 as a games device: its seamless integration with Xbox Live, the online gaming service that has contributed heavily to the success of Microsoft's console. When you switch on your handset, there's an Xbox Live icon on the main menu – click on this, provide your gamer ID and password and you have access to your XBL account. Now, any game you play on the device adds points to your gamer score, just like an Xbox title. You also have access to leaderboards, and to your friends list so you can challenge mates to multiplayer games or just spy on them and see what they're playing.
Of course, there are similar services on iOS and Android devices (Scoreloop and OpenFeint, for example, or Apple's own Game Center), but for the 50 million Xbox owners out there, the Windows Phone 7 system is convenient and nicely holistic. "The importance of being able to connect to the Xbox live community goes way beyond being able to play games on the handsets," says Mark Clarke of Earworm Mobile, who make musical brain training apps. "This stretches from mobile multiplayer games, through community building with your gaming clan and friends, to the multiple marketing opportunities of being able to tap into the brand loyalty engendered by the console itself. It's a truly mobile multiplayer community."
For developers, too, there are advantages to the phone's use of XNA Game Studio. This managed development environment is based around the programming language C#, which can cause problems for larger studios who have a lot of their game tech written in C++. However, the easily portability of code betweeb WP7 and Xbox, plus the wealth of online tutorials, libraries and community support, is a massive advantage, especially for smaller and less experienced teams.
"Microsoft offers many tools for developers both experienced and inexperienced, to rapidly produce applications for Windows 7 Mobile," says Steven Batchelor-Manning, of Nottingham-based studio, Nerf Games. "XNA is fairly open and simple to use. This allows for easy prototyping and testing of products before entering extensive development, which you don't get with other mobile platforms.
"We program in C#, using the Microsoft tool kits such as C# express edition and XNA 4.0. This allows us to develop the same project for PC, Xbox and Windows 7 Mobile, whilst using the same collection of assets. It rapidly increases the rate at which we create the final product and means we can concentrate our efforts on quality games. Developing for Windows Mobile 7 alongside PC and Xbox development only adds about 30% extra development time."
He is similarly complimentary about developer support. "The tools provided by Microsoft have really low barriers in terms of computer know-how. It also produces a lot of good tutorials. But actually, the vast majority comes from the community. The Microsoft App Hub (previously known as Creators' Club), allows developers to come together and share knowledge, tools and tutorials. Microsoft also provides a Windows 7 Mobile emulator for developers, which gives an accurate representation of a Windows 7 Mobile device, allowing for cost-effective development as we don't need to purchase the phones."
Mark Clarke agrees: "There are lots of example apps produced by Microsoft, and their help has been exemplary. The community is excellent, too – for example Code Project and Stack Overflow are useful resources. The development environment is several generations ahead of what Apple offers. We have seen iPhone apps that have taken days to transfer to Android that have been transferred to Windows within hours."
"We're hugely indebted to Jeff Weber who created the Farseer physics engine based on Box2D, without it our game would have taken a great deal longer to develop," adds Henry Hoffman of Angry Mango, developer of Bafta-nominated WP7 title, Mush. "I don't think there's been a single occasion where we've been stuck on a problem and the online community haven't already solved it for someone else. Normally, throughout development we'd ask all sorts of questions, but a simple search of the forums proved enough. Also, XNA is so widely used it's difficult to walk into a Game Development course at a University and not bump into a bunch of experts. Our experiences have been that XNA developers are always willing to share their knowledge and help others out."
There are fragmentation possibilities, though. As we've seen with Google Android, phones produced by different manufacturers have different technical specifications, which can be a headache for app developers. At the moment, Microsoft dictates a minimum set of requirements from vendors and the base OS is the same on all devices. However, there are concerns that the recent strategy deal with Nokia, which will see the ailing mobile phone giant building its next generation of handsets around the WP7 platform, will muddy the waters. Nokia appears to have been granted exclusive rights to customise the WP7 offering, and although the companies have denied this will have any impact on the OS, the ambiguity is there.
Clarke, though, is hopeful, the alliance will lead to more not less clarity. "The confusion that Nokia was causing amongst the development community with its multiple OSs was something that also had to be resolved if they were to compete with the other major players. If Nokia and Microsoft can successfully couple Nokia's expertise of manufacturing first class hardware with a stable and well supported development environment and ecosystem, the results could make for a formidable and vibrant development platform." At the very least it should ensure that WP7 doesn't go the way of other recent Microsoft mobile initiatives, like the cancelled Kin, or the Zune, which is now available only in North America. One significant barrier to developer support for WP7 is the fear it might be gone by the time a project is completed.
There are other controversial elements of the WP7 developer environment. As with Xbox Live Arcade, Windows Phone 7 offers a curated experience, which means Microsoft controls the quality of games appearing on the device. While Apple's approvals system is strict, Windows Phone 7 software apparently has to go through an even more stringent process, designed to prevent the massive duplication of very similar titles.
For consumers it's a good feature – it means there aren't thousands of mediocre apps to wade through, while really good games will be easier to find. For developers, however, the system throws up a few problems. "It has its benefits and its drawbacks," says Batchelor-Manning. "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. Microsoft is in complete control and smaller developers will always be battling up hill until they reach a point where their title is trending – like Minecraft."
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. These sorts of campaigns free smaller developers up from the worry of having to market their titles – but, of course, that's assuming they're lucky enough to make it onto Microsoft's radar (and the first Must Have selection is very much more about promoting WP7 itself, rather than about helping small studios – Angry Birds and Doodle Jump don't really need a lot of help at the moment).
Elsewhere, interconnectivity with Xbox console games opens up some intriguing cross-platform gaming possibilities. Fable: Coin Golf, for example, is a simple but well-designed WP7 puzzler based on Lionhead's epic Xbox RPG. It's basically a simulation of pub games like Shove Ha'Penny and skittles, with players guiding coins through a series of obstacle-strewn courses. But the interesting bit is, if the player also owns Fable III on Xbox, any gold they win in Coin Golf is transferred to their console version, where it can be spent on in-game items.
Fable: Coin Golf was developed by London-based IdeaWorks3D, a veteran mobile developer, working in close conjunction with Lionhead. According to studio head Rob Hendry, the cross-platform integration was surprisingly quick and intuitive. "Lionhead's technical team did some great work to make these features straightforward for us to implement," he says. "They provided a back-end service and API for us to communicate with, including player identification by Xbox LIVE gamertag. We simply had to hook up the client side, run a few tests and it just worked. It's great when that happens!"
"I think what we'll see more of is things like Fable: Coin Golf – actions happening on the phone that have an impact on the console title," says Kevin Unangst, Microsoft's senior global director of PC and Mobile Gaming. "We have things like Full House Poker, which let you play poker on the phone and have that unlock items in the console version, or have part of your bankroll transferred over. Over time, we'll push that further. We ran a video at Mobile World Congress where we showed we could take things like the Kinect data coming out of the sensor on the console and send that over to the Windows Phone 7. Someone playing on Kinect can interact with someone else on a phone, and the phone can receive things like the skeletal data – it boggles your mind the kinds of experiences once you get that kind of interactivity."
And here's that video:
Rob Hendry reckons we're entering into a new era of true cross-platform gaming. "Because your online presence now has a common identity on all LIVE platforms, any data whatsoever can be pushed to the cloud and retrieved by another app. Before long, we expect we will see true asymmetrical game experiences, where you play a single game from very different perspectives on different platforms. For example, strategy games where you manage your campaign resources on your phone, then drop into the action on your console. Or role playing games that use the phone for customising avatars and the console for questing and fighting battles." EA has also mentioned the possibility of a Fifa football title that lets you change your team formation or buy new players via your mobile.
The possibilities are fascinating and Unangst sees harnessing this functionality in innovative ways as a key aim going forward. "The phone isn't just a passive viewer it can participate, I can touch the display and send data directly to the console – these screens are truly connected. There are more creative minds than mine thinking, 'wow. I have a whole new range of toys to play with!'"
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