Microsoft Paying For Porting iPhone GamesMicrosoft Paying For Porting iPhone Games

Microsoft has been throwing around cash lately to help bolster the application offerings for Windows Phone 7. Compared to Android and iPhone application stores. Windows Mobile's library is at best anemic. To make matters worse, everything has to be rewritten for WP7. Microsoft seems to be taking the "if you want things done right, do it yourself" approach to filling the library.Earlier this month I told you that Microsoft had commissioned an outside firm to develop as many twenty games to get placed in the Windows Phone Marketplace.

PocketGamer is now reporting that Microsoft has been contacting "successful iPhone developers" to front them cash and get their iPhone app in the WP7 Marketplace.

The catch is, no native code for WP7 third party apps, and iPhone relies on C++ for its apps. WP7 requires third party developers to work in Silverlight or XNA. Right now, there seems to be few if any takers for the project. Microsoft answer is, according to people involved, to tweak the development environment that would allow porting from C++ to XNA easier and thus financially viable.

You have to ask though, if developers are getting cash up front and still claiming the hurdle is too high to port to WP7 approved development environments, how many existing WinMo developers will bring their WinMo 6.x apps to the new platform?

Last year, Palm started at ground zero with no apps and no devices when it launched the WebOS based Pre. That hasn't been a successful launch by about any standard. Microsoft will be in the same boat this year with WP7. It might as well be called WP1. From a developer and consumer standpoint, that is exactly what it is.

If nothing else, it highlights the problems developers face and gives Microsoft further incentive to make the porting process easier or (gasp!) consider letting developers use native code. I couldn't count on the latter though.