News · 13 Jun 2010 · MTW Editorial Team
One more Windows Phone 7 rumor for the day. PocketGamer.biz is claiming that an iPhone developer has been offered money to port his application to Windows Phone 7. However the anonymous developer supposedly declined the offer because the cost of porting his C++ code to C#/silverlight or XNA was too high. Take all this with a grain of salt though. First off you must remember that a similar rumor was started (by John Gruber?) around the launch of the Zune HD, rumor that was never confirmed especially given that the Zune HD doesn’t have (and will never have) a third-party application marketplace. Secondly iPhone applications aren’t code entirely in C++ (you need an to use Object-C to have any kind of GUI) so the claim that it is to costly to port it to Silverlight/XNA is shady at best. And why would Microsoft offer money for an application port knowing that this application would need native access to the OS? The Twin Blades game that I hand the chance to play on the Windows Phone 7 prototype last month was originaly an iPhone game, was then released on Xbox Live Arcade and then ported to Windows Phone 7 in two weeks by one programmer (Press Start Studio = only 5 guys) and has also now been released on Samsung Bada phones. Now I’m not trying to say that Microsoft isn’t working in collaboration with developers to crank out a boatload of WP7 apps for the launch but Microsoft has enough experience in the software and games industry to do things in the right way and not just “throw loads of money at iPhone developpers”.
Source: PocketGamer.biz via WMPU
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