Holiday Gift Guide »

Videos: What’s it going to be like to develop games for Windows Phone Series 7?

By: , IntoMobile
Friday, March 12th, 2010 at 2:17 AM

The 2010 Games Developers Conference is in full swing right now, and at the event Microsoft decided to reveal a little bit more information about Windows Phone Series 7, due to hit later this year. As the picture above shows, Microsoft is going to tightly control what goes inside devices running their latest mobile operating system. That’s going to prove helpful to developers since they’ll be targeting a very specific set of specifications, and don’t have to deal with the pain in the ass process of porting their games to different screen resolutions, versions of Windows Mobile, and supporting with various input methods.

Say you’re a developer and you want to write a really graphic intensive game, and know that the GPU inside Windows Phone Series 7 devices can’t push your first person shooter at 800 x 480 pixels. No problem thanks to a dedicated hardware scaler included that can take your lower resolution title and make it look beautiful, even on a higher resolution screen, without taxing the GPU.

The two videos below should give you all the information you need … which isn’t much. We’re going to have to wait a few days until MIX 2010 (March 15 – 17) to hear more about what it’s going to be like to write applications for what hopefully will be Microsoft’s well overdue rebirth into the mobile market.

[Via: Pocket Now]

About The Author

Stefan Constantinescu

Stefan Constantinescu (@WhatTheBit on Twitter) has loved technology since as far back as he can remember. It started with computers, but in the past few years his passion has turned to mobile devices. As a mobile phone enthusiast who lives and breathes devices that connect to the internet, he knows he is not alone with this radical fascination of all things wireless. He is strongly opinionated and enjoys a good debate so leave comments in his posts and he’ll get back to you! Stefan began blogging as a hobby in the fall of 2006 and joined IntoMobile in the summer of 2007. Later he got a job at Nokia in March 2008, but as of June 2009 he has rejoined the IntoMobile team. He is currently based out of Helsinki, Finland.

  • Henry Tsau

    I don’t think there’ll be any money in developing for Windows Phone 7 Series. The number of handsets will be very small compared with other platforms. There are already over 50 Android handsets, and an expected 50 more Android ‘slates’ to arrive throughout this year. And iPhone’s sales are legendary.

    Microsoft says you can just dump your Xbox code onto a phone. It won’t be that good. The phones tiny ARM processor won’t be up to much. Microsoft tried this 3 years ago, between Xbox and PC, and developers rejected it back then.

    Android and iPhone will remain the focus of developers, as that’s where all the money is.

  • Stefan Constantinescu

    I remain optimistic, and besides, it’s way too early to tell. The same argument you have for Windows Phone 7 Series was given for Android; Why bother competing with the iPhone?

  • wirecup

    This articel says it all. WP7 went from only supporting 2 screen resolutions (85? or 800 x 480) to now just supporting games at 320×480 (a really old screen resolution). Conclusion: WP7 is a crippled hardware and a crippled software product. They should have been looking forward with hardware to match from the beginning, instead of now going backward, and started upscale to support the 1024x and 1280x small screens that are becoming available. What is the real story behind this about face, multiple consumer confusing versions of WP7 now (WinMo again)?